


Salt and Dirty Rain

by aesopeau



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, M/M, because it's not my fic without angst, con man!tsukki, this is mainly a tsukki story, yakuza!au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-04-09 10:58:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 50,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4345934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesopeau/pseuds/aesopeau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A con was a trap of coincidences, planned coincidences, perfectly arranged coincidences that happened perfectly and met much more frequently than once every blue moon. Cons and coincidences fell upon timing, on observation, on knowing the individual on the other end more than they knew themselves like what their favorite foods were, what drinks they preferred, which foot they preferred when taking the first step, what made their knees weak, their hearts jump, what made them shudder and leave their skins with goose bumps like the plucked body of a chicken. It was research and timing and knowing how to act and when to act.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can take the girl out of the yakuza!au, but you can't take the yakuza!au out of the girl.

Once upon a time, Kei Tsukishima held onto his mother’s fingers—three of them because that’s about as many as he could grasp with such small hands.

 

His mother hands were wet and slippery, and when it dried, it felt sticky and thick and smelled faintly of metal and rust, like leaving an old bike out in the rain for too long. They stood together in front of a door, wooden with a quaint little light post just above to the right. Tsukishima’s eyes stared at it for a long while, watched the bugs and insects flock to it, attracted by its brightness—attracted to the strangeness and foreignness of such illumination when their eyes were born in darkness and they lived and breathed the same. He stood there on that very porch with his mother, wearing a thin sweater she had tugged onto his small frame quickly, fumbling in the night and grabbed a scarf from off the chair beside her and wrapped it around his throat. The scarf was not his, not in how it fit—too large—or how it smelled—musky, a bit like a strong vanilla, and sandalwood. While still half-asleep, he remembered the way his mother’s fingers shook as she tried to drape the sweater and muffler on him, hastily and messily missing the buttons. And when that was poorly done, she had tugged him and he followed, followed her down the maze of stairs of their home that he didn’t knew existed, followed her out the door and down the street filled with people who stumbled over their tongues as well as their feet, followed her down the flight of stairs, jumping two or three at a time and slipping into a train carriage.

 

The rattle of the train made him nauseous and the sleep that was once so heavy in his bones as if the night had injected lead and iron into his skin to weigh him down disappeared. He tucked himself in the space between his mother’s arms and her body and only wished the train would stop so he wouldn’t have to throw up in her lap.

 

They stood at the door and young Kei Tsukishima felt his eyelids begin to fall heavy again behind the frame of his glasses. When he closed his eyes he could still see the bursts of light behind the darkness of his lids left behind by staring at the post too long, the same way you might start to go blind if you stared at the sun directly more than you should. His small six-year-old body could not bear the weight of keeping slumber at bay with the air so crisp and chilly, the moon so bold and bright behind them. The crickets’ call was his lullaby, seducing him into sleep. Leaning against his mother’s trembling side, he pressed the gold curls and wisps of his hair into her torso, hearing her breathless panting more clearly, her half-choked sobs more strained. His body swayed with her as she furiously buzzed, knocked and pounded against the door.

 

 _Answer, answer. Nana, it’s me, please open the door. Please, answer. Please, please open your door. Please, please, please_. It was a steady string of two words, maybe three.

 

Please. 

 

Answer.

 

Help.

 

Repeated over and over again. She said it all so quickly that one word blended into the other and it no longer sounded like she was trying to string sentences together anymore with the words that clung to her tongue. Eyes drooping, body falling heavier and heavier into her body, he listened to her voice echo like a babbling stream, water bubbling in a helpless plea, chanting and praying to whatever savior lived behind the plain wooden oak door with a nice warm welcome mat. Tsukishima wasn’t sure what she wanted from this house, wasn’t sure why they were out in Kasukabe—he learned later—so late at night and nowhere near the comforts of the steady streaming thumps and bumps, car horns and store alarms of Tokyo. While Kasukabe was not so far, and not any less of an urban city than the other, Kasukabe was not Tokyo, not where he was born or the city whose air gave him life, whose skyscrapers and glass windows had etched his very first cries and screams into themselves when he released it, gasping and trembling.

 

Kasukabe was not Tokyo that was all.

 

The door opened. Tsukishima, between half-closed eyes, saw the sudden flood of light that poured out. He turned his head away, pressed his face into his mother’s rough denim jeans. The longer he closed his eyes, the harder he squeezed them, wished for sleep to drop him this half state, this between state, this state of not this nor that. He heard his mother’s choked gasp, and his hold on her disappearing. Instead, he felt his mother’s soft hair, her arms scooping him up with ease. He buried his face into the cascade of hair that smelled of lavender and vanilla.

 

Arms slung around her neck, forehead pressed against her throat, legs wrapped loosely around the curve of her hips, he felt relief wash over him at the very moment that they engulfed her, shaking and clattering and rattling a trickling peace to the mind into her bones. It quivered in her throat, the same sound a string of a bow makes after the arrow is released, as she tried to speak in a language of gratitude filled with choked cries, whimpers, and trying to catch breath as if all the oxygen in the world didn’t have enough to sustain her at that very moment.

 

Her nails carded through the short wispy golden locks, desperate. She comforted him to soothe herself. _It’s going to be all right, Kei. We’re going to be fine._ Every part of her body sobbed and shook as she muttered those words into the ear near her trembling lips. On instinct, his short fingers clung to her tighter, twisting them into the loosely curled blond locks. His hands twitched and twisted as he felt his mother’s muffled sob and her hot breath warm a small space of his neck where the scarf had slipped off, a scarf so large it covered half his face and smelled nothing like him but smelled entirely like the city they fled.

 

He fell asleep finally, rocked and lulled to sleep by his mother’s cries and a musky scent he didn’t realize later on in his life would eventually fade no matter how hard he tried to preserve it.

 

+++

 

The smoke curled and danced as it escaped his lips and stretched itself thin into the larger open space of the hotel room. Tsukishima exhaled all the smoke, some escaping through the flare of his nose. He swung his legs over to the side of the bed and felt with his toes for material that felt like his rough jeans, cold and familiar denim. He took a long drag as he got up and grabbed the pants that he has hooked onto his toes, reeling a fish in that’s not giving a fight at all as it hangs limply by the arc of his toes. His long and slender fingers felt for his phone in his pockets before he decided to slip the pants on.

 

There were a few missed calls. Mom. Yamaguchi. Unknown numbers that he was sure would call him again if they were still desperate.

 

He pressed call for the first one and tucked the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he tried to slide on his pants. The phone rung, a low rolling buzz in his ear. It took four rings before there was a click on the other end and the answer of a calm, but distinctly tired voice on the other line.

 

“Kei?”

 

“Hey mom,” he spoke, “I just saw your call. Sorry I missed it.” There was a beat of silence as he pulled the zipper up and clasped the button. “I’m okay,” he added, the crucial words for his mother’s sanity and peace of mind. He could hear the relief spread and rub against her tense bones and joints as she let go of the breath she held twisted in her lungs. He always had to say those words, especially being back in Tokyo again.

 

“Good,” she breathed.

 

“Were you sleeping?”

 

“No, no, I was awake.”

 

His mouth twisted into a thin line of displeasure as he ran a hand through the gold locks, tugging some in places where his scalp itched. “You better not have stayed up worrying after I didn’t pick up,” Tsukishima huffed as he padded over to the other side of the bed and picked up the other pair of pants. The phone returned to its propped state by his shoulder as he fished out the wallet, smooth black leather. His fingers flipped it open and a picture stared back at him. A young man in his mid-20s with smooth black hair and a charming smirk, straight broad shoulders and an arrogance that exuded in such a flat DMV photo. Tsukishima’s eyes shift to the lump on the bed with half his blue dress shirt unbuttoned and a pot-belly stomach hanging over the waistband of his boxers. The man’s mouth hung open as he snored so loudly Tsukishima wondered if it was better to take the phone call outside before his mother hears. He slipped out the thick wad of bills tucked into such a slim wallet and folded it to shove into the front of his own pockets.

 

He heard his mother laugh weakly, admitting her defeat. He imagined her running her finger along the rim of her favorite ceramic tea cup—a gradient wash of forest and jade green—as she closed her eyes and looked down, her blonde hair falling like a waterfall of the sun’s rays stretching and thinning forming the luscious locks. “I can’t help it, Kei. Your mother is a worry wart.” There was a beat before he could hear her lips tug into a smile. “Forgive me?”

 

Tsukishima held up the DMV photo and the man—Dan Kenko the CEO of one of the leading business firm’s in the country who breathed, slept and pissed out money, who liked wine and gambling and loved eating at ritzy French cuisine restaurants—sprawled out on the bed to compare with the thinning dark brown hair and poor flop of a comb over that stretched out like wires across a shiny and pink scalp. _At least he had some sort of proof that he was mildly handsome and fuckable 20 years ago_ , he thinks as he exhales another steady stream of smoke through his nose and tucks the cigarette limply in the corner of his lips. 

 

“Not like I can be mad at you for being a mom,” he answered with a roll of his eyes as if she could see and he knew she could picture it too. He was her son after all.

 

He threw the emptied wallet onto the vacant space on the bed and picked up his shirt that was crumpled on the ground. Tsukishima began to slide it on again, making sure he could still hear her voice when the phone was moved away. His mother coughed softly, breaking whatever thoughts she had mulled over in the quick silence they shared. “You’ll come home soon, won’t you?” He could hear her straightening her back, trying to ease a happy lilt to her tone though everything was coated—no, drenched—in her anxiety and worry as it always had whenever Tsukishima mentioned Tokyo to her, whether it was living there or visiting or just the name itself. She had never told him why they left the city, and he had never asked. And, while he was also old enough to remember, he couldn’t. Tsukishima remembered breaking into those years of adolescence and laying on his bed, trying to remember things before he turned six and all that came to him behind his closed eyes were light bursts, the kind from staring at a lamp post for too long and his nose caught a lingering scent of musky vanilla despite no one else being in the room with him. Everything before was a thick black night, moonless and starless and devoid of memories.

 

If that was what his mind gave him, Tsukishima figured it was better for him not to doubt his own subconscious judgments.

 

He smoothed his hand over his crinkled shirt and slipped his shoes back on with ease. “I’ll try to make it back home in two weeks. Things have just been a bit busy right now with work and all.” His eyes flickered over at the sprawled out, shit-wasted man named Dan Kenko.

 

“Okay,” she said. “Kei?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“It’ll be all right.” A ghostly sensation of his mother’s fingers running through his hair desperately tingled. He ran his own hand in the same motions, as if it would ease the shadowy movements that ruffled his hair.

 

They said good night and hung up. Tsukishima breathed out as he stuffed his phone back into his pocket and picked up his jacket. He glanced out the parted curtains of the window. He saw the stretch and sea of neon lights and sky scrapers trying to reach heaven or cut it down. It was a moonless night, little stars and thin clouds decorating the black canvas. Tsukishima wondered if it would rain tomorrow as he thumbed the cash in his pockets. The thought was casual and fleeting as he left the other man in the hotel room.

 

He heard the name _Rintaro_ breathed out and a hand rustling the bed sheets beside him.

 

Tsukishima shut the door, continued to roll the embossed paper money between his fingers. Business as usual.

 

 

+++

 

 

What was a coincidence but a mere overlap of time, of action and expected reaction. Each individual temporarily walking into the life of the other in the same way planets orbited within the solar system, aligning perfectly for one day out of several million years and then drifting and parting and spinning at its own timing and velocity and speed and spin.

 

What was a con then?

 

A con was a trap of coincidences, planned coincidences, perfectly arranged coincidences that happened perfectly and met much more frequently than once every blue moon. Cons and coincidences fell upon timing, on observation, on knowing the individual on the other end more than they knew themselves like what their favorite foods were, what drinks they preferred, which foot they preferred when taking the first step, what made their knees weak, their hearts jump, what made them shudder and leave their skins with goose bumps like the plucked body of a chicken. It was research and timing and knowing how to act and when to act.

 

Knowing this, knowing the con, knowing coincidences, Tsukishima had settled on one truth: whoever invented the ideology of fate pulled the biggest con of all.

 

Tsukishima sucked on his cigarette, inhaling deeply before breathing out a steady stream. The dot of orange ember burning away at the filter closed in near his thumb and index finger that held the stick. Tsukishima allowed the last and slow drag to burn his throat, and coat the inside of his lungs with bitter ash before he dropped the butt and snubbed it with the front of his black boots before rounding the rails and climbing down the flights of stairs that led to the underground train station.

 

His mind repeated one single word over and over again as he stared at the red words that boldly laughs at him on the data display boards that greeted him. Closed, they all read. He had missed the last train for the night.

 

 _Fuck_. _Fuck. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck._

 

And when that chant overwhelmed his mind, his mouth even slipped out, “You’ve got to be fucking shitting me,” he deadpanned, not totally surprised that this would happen to him.

 

His head dropped heavy as he sighed. He ran his hand through his hair again and rubbed his dry and irritated eyes from the colored contact lenses he was wearing. He hated himself for forgetting to bring along his glasses after the job was done. Tsukishima’s hands wrapped around the headphones that hung around his neck as he began to turn, only to see a body angled towards him, dark eyes narrowed, and a curled lip that seemed to waver into a confused frown. Tsukishima looked at the man who stared at him, messy dark bedhead hair that probably took four hours to look effortless, a lean physique hugged by a black tailor fitted suit and a white button down shirt and black tie—the streamline color disrupted by a silver metal tie clip—and a metal briefcase slung over his shoulder. His gaze flickered to the other man who didn’t take notice of Tsukishima until he realized the conversation the two shared earlier was slowly turning into a monologue. The other, Tsukishima concluded, had no appeal and therefore not even worth taking in the details as he did the former.

 

Handsome or not, Tsukishima knew that turning away was best, leaving the deserted train platform was best. It was the way the man stood, the way his broad shoulders were positioned, the way his hand was tucked into the pocket of his slacks. He had seen it before, he knew, it was hidden in that black envelope of space that his brain refused to reveal, not even a pinprick of light from those times managed to slip out. The instincts of the animal that worked the seedy life grew anxious the longer he was stared at, a predator now turned prey in another’s eyes.

 

Leave.

 

Leave. 

 

_Leave!_

 

His skin shouted as shivers crawled along the surface.

 

Timing, that was key in a con. Timing, such as calling out a name—

 

“Akiteru?”

 

Tsukishima stopped in his half-step towards the stairs, hand already resting on the cold metal rails that led up, up to the surface where he did and didn’t belong, up to Tokyo where it was and wasn’t his home. But, the name stopped him because it was a name he knew, a name that had fell off his tongue endearingly and high very often—he just wasn’t able to recall those memories now. It was a name spelled with the kanji for _bright_ and _ray_ , a name that belonged to a face equally happy and grinning wide in a photo that rested on the bedside table of his mother’s room in Kasukabe.

 

Tsukishima ducked his head, pulled his headphones over his ears quickly and fumbling in his pocket to press play, letting the music drown whatever words the stranger might say next, words that might be familiar to him. “Sorry, you’ve got the wrong person,” he mumbled as he raced up the stairs.

 

His breath trembled and the city around him shivered with his exhale as if it was an extension of himself. Tsukishima tilted his head back to better look at the sky, dark and empty, a black canvas, stars hidden like the memories tucked and blanketed deep in his mind. But, he could feel the edges of his brain's hold slipping, slipping all with his brother's name spoken by a man with messy hair and a well cut suit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, thanks for reading! This is the first time I've ever written a Haikyuu!! fic so sorry for any out of characterness. Technically this was supposed to be a kuroo/tsukki/akaaashi/bokuto fic, but with the way the plot is being fleshed out, it's slowly becoming a tsukki + others fic. I'll add more tags/characters/relationships as the story progresses. It may or may not at some point reach an explicit rating, depends on how daring I am. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. ♡
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The nonsense the man blurted out was all just nonsense spoken with the quickness and confidence of some detective in an old mystery crime-solving book. None of that troubled him. It was the fact that this man found someone invisible. This man held onto a name on his tongue that even Tsukishima could not speak. And, his eyes flickered over to the stranger who pouted as he smoothed out the lines of his suit, this man was not someone Tsukishima wanted to know either.

_Akiteru_. Tsukishima breathed out the name, laced each syllable in the sigh. He let it carry in the evening breeze, let it float to the sky like a stray balloon that slipped out of clumsy hands, and make a stranger stop when they catch a glimpse of the lonely and solitary thing pass by. The name sounded foreign coming from that man’s mouth, the man who said it so comfortably despite its breathless and speechless quality rounding out the sounds. If Tsukishima uttered it now too, he was sure it would sound equally strained and awkward. He was sure it would sound something close to someone who was deaf trying to speak, grasping on vague ideas of what each letter placed together would sound like. Even repeating the name in his mind he could hear the dissonance—a little brother who couldn’t even say his older brother’s name.

 

They never talked about his brother or his father. It was as if both men disappeared the day Tsukishima and his mother stepped foot into the sanctuary of the Yamaguchi household, the wife a long time childhood friend of his mother’s, and started a new life. Tsukishima was sure he knew the reason why they never uttered the name or tried to remember the persons. But, that too remained deeply hidden and saved in the space his mind that would never be touched. The sound of his thoughts fell heavy onto the sidewalk, crushed with the following steps of his boots.

 

Tsukishima slowed down until he was at a full stop. Hands tucked in the warmth of his jacket pockets, he looked over his shoulder, picturing the subway entrance a few streets down which was now a dot in the haze of Tokyo’s neon night life by now. Temptation churned his stomach. He wanted to race down those flights of stairs again two or three steps at a time, stumble along the empty platform as he searched for the man in the suit standing with lips parted and grab him by the broad shoulders, and shake the name out of him again.

 

 _Teach me how to say his name_.

 

_Teach me that warmth._

 

 _Teach me what I forgot_.

 

These were all the things he wanted to say, the only demands that he could muster if he could track the man down again. But all those wants and desires, where would that get him? Profitless and empty. He pulled the carton of cigarettes from his pocket and tapped another smoke out. He lit it, took a long and heavy drag until he was choking and coughing from the burn, like it was his first time smoking again—young, desperate, not sure when to let go and only does when it's painfully uncomfortable. Tsukishima settled that any more thoughts like these and he’d really be wasting his time. So, he slipped back into the flow of the crowds, drunken and tourists alike, following the wandering and the aimless for a little while.

 

It was a ten-minute walk from where he was from and he had already gone through his second cigarette while he was out. The stick now a stub was crushed under his foot as he pulled open the door to a bar. The stain glass of the windows colored the walls and skin and hair and teeth in dips of bottle green, rich cerulean, and an ease of magenta inside. While the bar had a good amount of people around, lingering and chatting and talking so close their words became kisses, the leather stools by the sleek and polished dark wood bar counter were empty besides those seated near the wall.

 

Tsukishima ruffled his hair, shook loose the night chill as he approached the counter, and settled into a seat. He waited patiently for the bartender behind the counter to notice him, Sawamura Daichi the owner of The Crow Bar and also his boss. It didn’t take a long time for Daichi to finish scraping the foam off the top of a glass of beer and placing it down with ease over a square napkin to a stereotypical salary man—down to limbs weighed down by stress, a shirt crinkled from overtime and a skinny tie hung loose around his neck. His thanks was mumbled, forced out by manners before he gulped half of the gold liquid down. Tsukishima’s irritated and dry eyes swept across the room before shifting back to Daichi who worked his way over with furrowed brows and a twisted mouth.

 

“You’re off today,” was the first thing the broad builded man said to him, though Tsukishima could hear the questioning cadence that almost made it into his words.

 

“Yeah,” Tsukishima answered. “But, I was around town and ended up missing the last train. So, I was just wondering if I could stay in the room for tonight?”

 

Daichi nodded. “Sure.” There was a beat of a pause, a pause that Tsukishima didn’t like his boss to have while he stared him down with the dark brown eyes, that looked black and heavy with the dim lighting. “Are you okay?”

 

His body tensed slightly and his fingers twisted around the inside fabric of his jacket pocket—hidden from Daichi’s view from the other side. Tsukishima reasoned that he must have been tired from the day’s con that his guard had dropped an increment too low that allowed whatever thoughts flittering through his head to be exposed, like the first mark on a mirror that’s not yet fully a crack but about to be one. _Yes,_ he thought, _That has to be it_. The other idea that perched in his mind would have been much more disconcerting to mull over.

 

The idea that he was slowly beginning to lose his skill at being a con artist—only drawing attention when he wanted it, only being a true and noticeable human being when he had draped on another name with another skin with another smile and another personality, only when he was someone other than himself.

 

So, Daichi noticing something about him, something being imperceptibly _off_ about him was troubling. Naturally, it would also never happen again.

 

His answer was a short, sweet, and lackluster, “Fine.”

 

Temptation scratched at Tsukishima’s ear to ask the other man what he had seen, what he had noticed that brought on the question in the first place. If he knew, he’d be more wary of it for the next time. But asking questions would draw attention even more, have the other more heightened of his presence when Tsukishima didn’t need the presence in the first place, at least not here and not with Sawamura Daichi. And, wasn’t there a saying? Something with curiosity and a cat and the end not faring well for the latter? Tsukishima didn’t want to be that cat, he concluded as he quickly got off the stool and began to walk to the spare room at the back of the bar while Daichi was called over for an order.

 

Twisting the door open, Tsukishima entered “the room” as the workers liked to call it. It was a room for customers who were blacked out wasted to sober up in before closing. However, some of the employees used it as a hideout or a break room when things were either too hectic or too slow. The room itself was minimal. Hardwood panel floors, a mini fridge in the corner stocked with juice, soda, and water, cream colored walls with not much decoration except or a calendar they received as a new years gift from the local supermarket they bought their stock from, and a worn out leather couch that could fit three adults easily and comfortably. Tsukishima shut the door behind him as he took off his shoes and placed it at the foot of the couch and flopped himself down. His smooth fingers rubbed at his eyes, screaming and seething with the desire to take out the blue colored contacts out. But, without the contact containers and without his glasses, Tsukishima had no choice. He’d look like the walking dead tomorrow morning without shame.

 

With his thumb and forefinger pressed on his eyelids, Tsukishima could feel his body melt into the cushion of the couches, ready to dream of nothing and wake up sleepless and irritated as he always did. His thoughts began to blur and fade at the edges, ready to shut him down entirely, but he was stirred out of such peace by vibrations of his phone. He patted himself and slipped the phone out, estimating where to hold it before he opened one eye to see what it was.

 

>> tsukki are you free tomorrow?

>> want to meet up and grab breakfast?

 

Tsukishima didn’t have to look at the caller ID to see who it was that texted him. He knew it just by the name used in the message. His fingers paused over the touch phone’s keyboard. Did he want to see Yamaguchi with red and dried eyes first thing in the morning? The scene with Daichi earlier flickered in his mind, bothering him now even before sleep.

 

>> sure. 9 at the family diner near the station

 

He needed to see if he was actually slipping up or if it was fatigue. If he had to test it with anyone, Yamaguchi would be the perfect guinea pig. Tsukishima tossed the phone at the curl of his legs, feeling the soft thump by the back of his calves. The phone vibrated a few times again, but Tsukishima already knew what the other said.

 

>> sounds good! :-) see you tomorrow tsukki!!!

 

Tsukishima curled himself into a ball as best as he could on the cracked leather couch, preparing himself for tomorrow. If he couldn’t be invisible, if he couldn’t be a perfect liar at being completely ordinary, what good was he?

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

What occurred was a series of nothings. Not nothings in the sense that Yamaguchi was boring him at breakfast—a dark roast coffee with some sort of sandwich he didn’t care for besides fill the void in his stomach. But, nothings in that simply nothing happened. Whatever worries that had bubbled and threatened to spill over the container designed for all his thoughts and fears and doubts remained contained. Yamaguchi said nothing about Tsukishima in the worried inkling that something was _off_ , but nothing jumped off his tongue or a scratch of his mind could pick out. While he did ask the obvious question about the colored contacts and the irritated eyes, Yamaguchi noticed nothing and that was perhaps a feat considering how hypersensitive and keen his friend was to him in particular, an attachment born that night as Tsukishima was released from his mother’s sobbing clutches and settled in the strange and foreign bed that belonged to the boy his age.

 

Tsukishima held his expression, tracked his words, and observed over the rim of the coffee cup any clues that might indicate that Yamaguchi’s senses were pricked. Nothing. His shoulders after a while relaxed as he settled into his seat and watched the stretch of a smile and the crinkle of Yamaguchi’s nose, scrunching up his freckles—a cluster of dots merging into an abstract form of a constellation on the other’s face. That’s how he had always thought of the scattered freckles that crossed from his cheeks over his nose. They looked like stars that had kissed him, left their mark on him in hopes of telling the world about their love for him. The freckles fitted Yamaguchi perfectly. It made him look kind.

 

His mind settled that he was just tired yesterday that allowed Sawamura Daichi to catch his slip up. Calmed, Tsukishima eased back into that old and familiar skin he slipped on with Yamaguchi, kind at the eyes despite the overall flat expression and he let the other talk about home, work, friends, the bliss of an extraordinary ordinary life that glimmered like jewels to him. He let the ramblings of the day wash over him and dropped a comment, a ‘hmm’ or an ‘ah’ here or there to coax more. Yamaguchi was an over-sharer, but Tsukishima didn’t mind. He compensated for the both of them, if anything.

 

He listened of how the world turned with its own time.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

The tea in Tsukishima’s hands cooled as he blew into the white porcelain cup. He leaned into the palm that rested on his cheek as he eased into a smile that was supposed to look genuine—a little bit of teeth and slight crinkles in the eyes if he could manage. His blue contact colored eyes looked up at the other man from across the table through his lashes. Tsukishima had slipped on the skin of Oyama Kazuki and this was who Oyama Kazuki was, shy smiles and tender gazes, fluttering fingers and nice cups of tea. This was who Tsukishima Kei would be for the business entrepreneur across from him whose promiscuity was of common knowledge. Tsukishima smiled as he stroked the veiny hands with the pads of his fingers, thinking about the fair hands that trembled as the wife of said entrepreneur tried to wring her wedding band off—too tight and suffocating now after years, after the news was broken to her. Tsukishima laced their fingers together, brushing fingers along the other’s knuckles.

 

She dabbed at her eyes, _God I want him to be destroyed. Torn down for all he’s worth until he’s a pathetic mess._

 

Tsukishima continued to wipe down the glasses and tumblers until they squeaked with just a gentle rub of his cloth covered finger over the smooth surface. He listened with lowered eyes as the wife started with delicate sips and when the warmth and pooled in her throat and spread across her chest, she slammed down the cognac as if it was soda—hissing with the after burn.

 

All this he took into account as he tilted his head, letting his hair shift, and glancing up again. With a mousy voice and a body curling in shyly, he asked, “You’ll come and see me again tomorrow, won’t you?”

 

“Kazuki,” the man breathed out.

 

Timing.

 

“I really want to see you.” Tsukishima bit down on his lower lip and cast his eyes down for good measure.

 

Timing.

 

He laughed nervously as he slowly began to pull his hand away. “Maybe I’m demanding too much.”

 

Timing.

 

The man quickly grasped the sliding hand back, clutching, grasping, fearing sand slip between his fingertips as if each speck was gold. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “Of course! I—I had a important meeting tomorrow, but I’ll see if I can push it around. I want to spend time with you too.”

 

Timing. Tsukishima felt his lips twitch into a smirk, but dissolved it into that practiced Oyama Kazuki smile, relieved and endearing with eyes crinkling. “Great,” he said.

 

The man’s phone began to ring and he took it begrudgingly. Tsukishima turned his gaze out the window as the man argued over the phone. His eyes skimmed over bikes and small boutiques that looked like a manifestation of the colored pink puked all over the storefront and whatever insides of the store you could see, people texting on their phones and small cars speeding by. His skin began to shiver and shudder and tense at a vague feeling that he was being watched too, his disguise being pulled back like onion layers, giving up with too much ease. Before he could find the source of the sensation, the man called his—no, Oyama Kazuki’s name.

 

“I’m sorry, Kazuki. I have to get back to the office.” His lips were pulled into a tight line and his knuckles turned white as he gripped the phone.

 

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Tsukishima repeated, waving it off. “Get to work, I’ll see you tomorrow like you promised.”

 

The man sighed with relief, squeezed his hand disgustingly tight with the same forcefulness that greedy businessmen would believing everything they touched belonged to them, and quickly got up and left, his footsteps falling heavy on the pavement as he dashed out to his car. 

 

Tsukishima rolled his shoulders and let the smile drop entirely. Placing kindness and vulnerability and meekness at the forefront was so tiring. He closed his eyes as he sunk back into the plush cushions of the chair behind him. Tsukishima heard the bell of the coffee shop’s door ring as it welcomed a customer. His hand that rested on top of the table felt itchy and dirty and dry from the touches and grips. He wanted to scrub the man off of him already. Sighing, he opened his eyes to see a fitted dark gray slacks, a white dress shirt tucked in and a gray tailored suit. His eyes continued to crawl up the lean body that rested against the seat opposite him and fell on curled lips, warm colored eyes—the dripping oranges and yellows and browns of summer—and a black messy flop of bed hair.

 

“Can I help you?” his voice was cold, and flat.

 

The man slid into the once occupied seat and kept that irritating smirk on as his eyes bore into Tsukishima with such intensity, if he didn’t hold himself together, he would be peeled back with ease like onion layers.

 

Finally after a long silence, the man spoke with a voice low and melting that matched the warmth of his eyes, “Your name is Suzuki Ito. You were born and raised in Kyoto, but recently moved down here. Your parents are divorced and you live with your father who recently remarried a nice lady who he worked with at a banking firm. You now have two younger sisters who will be attending middle school for the first time next year. You sleep on the left side and you hate cauliflower. You prefer eating salty things because the dentist you went to as a kid told you some sort of horror story about eating sweet foods. And, you’re some sort of vegetarian.” The man leaned back with a proud smirk and a raised brow. His arms crossed over his chest as he continued to stare at Tsukishima.

 

He focused on the steam of the tea rising instead.

 

“I was right, wasn’t I?”

 

“What are you talking about?” Tsukishima narrowed his eyes to slits. He didn’t feel like being harassed by a stranger he shared about three words with at an empty subway station. “None of those were right.” Exasperation laced his tone.

 

The nonsense the man blurted out was all just nonsense spoken with the quickness and confidence of some detective in an old mystery crime-solving book. None of that troubled him. It was the fact that this man found someone invisible. This man held onto a name on his tongue that even Tsukishima could not speak. And, his eyes flickered over to the stranger who pouted as he smoothed out the lines of his suit, this man was not someone Tsukishima wanted to know either.

 

So, he settled his cup back down on the table after taking a quick sip before getting up—without looking like he was running away. He had already turned his back on the man when he continued.

 

“Okay, okay. Those might be wrong, but I do know one thing that’s true.”

 

He took a few steps before the man said, “You’re a con artist and I know the number of that target of yours that left earlier.” He didn’t say it particularly loud, but the fact of it made it ring clearer in his head with the same intensity as a bullhorn being shouted in his ear. Tsukishima half turned, hands turning to fists in the pockets of his jeans.

 

His lips curved into a scowl and his eyes narrowed even more, all of this to compensate for the fear that made his palms sweaty and his heart race. “What do you want?”

 

The man didn’t answer but motioned for Tsukishima to come back and sit down. He did. Though wary and slow, he did. Pleased with his obedience, he flashed a dangerous smile, baring white teeth and all.

 

“My name is Kuroo Tetsurou.”

 

Tsukishima supposed the pause was meant for his own introduction, but he didn’t give in. Kuroo Tetsurou continued grinning, entertained by his cold attitude. It was as if he found it refreshing, a blizzard meeting a town that suffered drought longer than it should. When Tsukishima continued to maintain the silence, Kuroo continued, “Not a chatterbox, are we? But you were so cute earlier being all flirty and lovey-dovey.”

 

Kuroo leaned back into his seat and checked the time on his watch.

 

Timing.

 

“Guess I’ll just get straight to the point.” Kuroo locked eyes with Tsukishima again, his smile disappearing just as quickly as Tsukishima switching skins. “I want to hire you for a con.”

 

“I don’t do for hire jobs.”

 

“Oh? Not even if you get a hefty salary along the way?”

 

“Sorry,” he said without the sincerity of an apology at all.

 

“You do pro-bono work?” Kuroo joked. He leaned back into his seat again, hands held the back of his head.

 

“Can I go now?”

 

“Aren’t you a little bit curious why I want to hire you?”

 

“No,” he lied.

 

Maybe he answered too slowly, hesitated somewhere within the second between Kuroo’s question and his answer, he wasn’t sure what it was that kept the other man sitting there, staring him down, following every line on his face as if he stared at a map, trying to place the lines on the paper into perspective of the stretching road before him.

 

“I don’t think I can take your no as an answer.” The statement lacked the joking and upbeat nature of all the others before it. “I won’t accept it and I don’t think you can refuse either.”

 

The glint in his eyes, the grumblings of a growl in the levelness of his voice wrapped itself around Tsukishima’s throat, choking him silent. Kuroo slipped his hand into the inner lining pocket of his suit, pulling out a piece of paper that had been folded and unfolded too many times that it could easily rip with just a tug. With his long slim fingers, he opened up the paper that was actually an old photo and splayed it on the table between them.

 

Tsukishima saw the black edges creep into his vision as he stared at the faces that caught his sight first, all smiling and laughing and radiating some strange warmth and peace in front of lavish traditional Japanese home. His eyes fell over the youth of his mother, the cradled new life of him as a baby wrapped up in her arms, the sturdy build of his father donning a kimono, and the face who carried the name of bright and ray proudly. It was an old photo, but he recognized it. His mother had the exact same one in her collection. His heart thumped wickedly and wildly in his throat, ready to be puked out and leave him dead. Kuroo tapped the photo with his forefinger. “This is the Tsukishima family. You know them?”

 

Tsukishima didn’t trust his voice so he shook his head.

 

“Well, I suppose you don’t. You’d probably be too young back then anyways.” He leaned back into his seat again, leaving the photo there to haunt Tsukishima. “That man there was Tsukishima Yoshimi, head of the Tsukishima syndicate. He and a large portion of the clan were killed during a coup about 17 years ago.”

 

The words fell like the swell of ocean waves crashing heavy and hard into the shore, beating against rock and sand with turbulence. “I need you to become Tsukishima’s youngest for a little while.” His finger tapped on the baby in the photo, covering his head and half his body.

 

Tsukishima swallowed the thick heart lodged in his throat. “Why the youngest?”

 

“Well, no one knows what happened to him and his mom, see? They ran away during the chaos. He could be dead as far as anyone knows, but that’s not your problem.”

 

“Why me?”

 

Kuroo’s eyes stared at him, engulfed him in its warmth turned unbearable heat for colored eyes. He leaned forward with his chin tucked on the palm of his hand. “You looked like him. Akiteru, I mean.” The seriousness faded and the smirk returned. This time, Tsukishima could catch the hesitation, the flickering concern and confusion and guilt in the forced transition. “And some things have come up that require some long lost yakuza heir to come back and since I can’t find the real one, you’ll just have to do.”

 

He cocked his head to the side now, observing Tsukishima’s gaze on the photo. “So, what do you say con man?”

 

Timing.

 

His scowl faded into a thin line of displeasure and reluctance. He sighed as he ran a hand along the nape of his neck, feeling the curled ends brush against his fingers. “I can’t say no, isn’t that what you said?” Tsukishima opened his eyes calmly and placed his hand over the photo, covering the faces, muffling a happy memory of a locked past that he felt a sudden desperation to uncover.

 

Timing. 

 

Kuroo’s smile curled into a deviant and Chesire grin.

 

“I’m not doing this pro-bono,” Tsukishima answered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter. We're finally getting to the good start. I was plotting this out and this may or may not become a loose anastasia!au with the way things are turning. Some sick and twisted yakuza!anastsia!au.
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> Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. ♡
> 
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> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsukishima swung his long legs off the bed, getting out of warm white sheets to prepare for meet up with Kuroo again. He was supposed to get ready, but there wasn’t much to prepare for. After all, how hard could it be to be himself, to be Tsukishima Kei when he already was?
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> He would be Tsukishima Kei.
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> And, he would not.

The pale slender finger scratched at the curled ends of golden hair that curved and tickled the back of his ear. Kuroo’s eyes followed the wispy long lashes and the high bridged nose and the small and gentle dip of a cupid’s bow that led to soft lips. The features looked all familiar and similar—frighteningly so that his breath had left him abruptly on that empty subway platform in a desperate haste as if it had seen a ghost that had the best of timing and new when to haunt him again after 17 years of nothing, letting Kuroo form guilt all on his own. But, sitting across from the man that seemed like a nightmare to him, he was able to catch the slight differences, differences that drew a line from his imagination and reality, from what could hurt him and what could not. The blond that sat across from him had sharper and more defined cuts to his face, less of the plump, hazy softness that reminded Kuroo of the ease of the setting sun and the rise of the hours of the moon. No, this face was purely sculpted for the night, carved and angled, sly and clever to the bone. He looked like Akiteru, but he was not. If Kuroo could be certain about anything, it was that one fact, that one truth that eroded him slowly as the days passed like memories crashing against the cliff walls, salt eating earth and dragging it down to the depths of the ocean, chipping into the soil one storming tidal wave at a time.

 

In the time that Kuroo observed the man before him as an artist sketching a portrait, or a scientist to a pastry dish, the other had pushed the unfolded photo back to Kuroo’s side of the table, slowly with the tips of his fingers as if fully touching the paper could send an electric shock through his hands and stop his heart. When Kuroo took it back and folded it up again into a neat square, sliding it back into his inner pocket, resting right above his heart, the blond pulled out his wallet and dropped a few bills—a generous amount of money nonetheless—for the half-sipped but cold tea, a sandwich whose remains were only flecks of brown crumbs on a white plate, an emptied coffee cup, and an untouched butter croissant.

 

The man stood up as he shoved his wallet back into his back pockets of his jeans that Kuroo’s eyes couldn’t help but wander down. Movements, all of them, he had to catch. Something told him that he’d miss something if he didn’t watch the blond, like missing the magic trick of making a coin disappear or pulling a bird out of a fisted hand.

 

“What?” the word that left his mouth sounded like an odd combination of a question, a statement and an irritated command. “Are you just going to sit there or are you going to tell me what exactly my job is supposed to be?”

 

Kuroo relaxed into his smile as he got up, fastening the buttons to his suit as he stood up and smoothed the wrinkles out as he walked behind the blond. “I thought we could’ve enjoyed a nice lunch together and discuss the details.”

 

The bell to the door began to ring as it was pushed, letting both of the men out of the warm coffee shop that was filled with people with nothing else to do, stories to be discovered in a space where the only thoughts or words one could hear was the rev of the coffee grinder in its well timed spurts.

 

“I don’t like staying in a place for long.”

 

“Oh?” he raised a curious brow.

 

“The longer you stay in a place like that the easier people remember you.”

 

“Is it so bad to be remembered?” Kuroo asked, he tipped his head back slightly to catch the stretch of white cloud against the broad blue canvas and the edges of sunlight. A plane flew by and then a stream of birds that took to the skies in a frightened flurry.

 

“Of course it is,” the blond answered in its monotonous cadence.

 

Kuroo waited for a follow-up, but was left with the other’s silence. He shifted his gaze to look at the man from the corner of his eye. He tucked a cigarette between his lips and tried to get his lighter to catch. It was all ordinary movements, slow and casual. But with such pale and slender fingers, brushing against such soft pink lips, everything seemed more deliberate, languid, calculated as if lighting the cigarette now was pretense for another action later on. Kuroo mulled over the statement of not wanting to be remembered because it was innately bad somehow. His heart thumped against the folded photograph in his pocket. A laugh escaped him, breathless and soft. Maybe, there was truth to that after all.

 

“So,” the stranger spoke, “You want me to be this yakuza kid, bit what exactly am I supposed to be doing?” He exhaled a steady stream of smoke.

 

The edges of Kuroo’s lips lifted up into a smile. “Just a bit of scaring, rattling some old bones.”

 

“Am I playing a ghost?”

 

“More or less.” His lips tugged higher and he dipped his head slightly to look up at the blond through his lashes. “You know, being remembered ain’t so bad.”

 

The other scoffed after he exhaled the smoke into Kuroo’s face. He might have seen amusement glint off those unnaturally blue eyes that clashed with the features of his face—or the features Kuroo expected to see. “For you it might not be.”

 

Straightening up again, a bit satisfied that he got a half-laugh from the stranger, Kuroo spoke up again as he ran his fingers against the bricks of the building, feeling the rough and bumpy textured surface as they walked. “Hey.” The blond turned his head when he left a pause too long.

 

“What?”

 

“You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

 

He turned his head away again and looked forward, taking in the cigarette deeper and longer now until the orange embers at the end flared and sizzled bright than its dull untouched burn before. The smoke escaped his lips as he talked, like puffs of airy cloud thinning as it left its home of the wide sky. “It’s not like I asked your name in the first place.”

 

“C’mon, common courtesy.”

 

“Then, what’s the kid’s name?”

 

Kuroo hummed and ahhhed, the only sounds the echoed in his ear besides their mismatched footsteps, a click from polished shoes and a stomp from tennis shoes. The buzz of the city was nothing more than white noise he had gotten used to and in fact needed whenever he wanted to be lulled to sleep and wake up relatively rested. His mind flittered through those black memories begrudgingly, wading through the swamp of happy memories, of Akiteru beaming and picking up a small child whose glasses were too large for his face and sudden movements made it fall lopsided. What was his name? The happy little boy that drank from the well of Akiteru’s joy who would be much older now. Kuroo wondered if that boy had let Akiteru’s last drops of happiness ferment in his blood. It must be sweet and strong and burning like well aged wine.

 

His mind continued to grab onto the name, the name of Akiteru’s pride and joy. A name was always a hard thing to grasp, fleeting when you wanted to recall it most and a shrill siren sound when you wanted to run away from it. Now that Kuroo was trying to find it and press it to his lips to speak, the syllables became a distant muffled scratch.

 

“His name was…” Kuroo repeated and repeated as if saying he could recall the name would lead to the very discovery, as if his trailing voice held a sort of command to do such a powerful thing as recall a name he only heard in drowned out passing.

 

The other snorted. With the hand the held the cigarette between his forefinger and middle finger, he covered the exposed smirk and lowered the long lashed eyes. “You don’t even remember the kid’s name?” the question fell like a statement with an imagined bitterness and fueled conviction that Kuroo didn’t understand until he followed, “Guess being remembered is a selective thing.”

 

He found himself suddenly desperate to grab the name, the name of a son birthed on the start of a new moon, a sliver of a crescent moon in the sky as the young Tsukishima babe took his first breaths. He had to remember this name. It was that forced and bitter smirk that showed between the spaces of his fingers that made Kuroo grow anxious to find it as if recalling the name was a key to unlocking a hallway of doors.

 

He clicked his tongue and a hand flew to his messy bed hair out of frustrated habit. His dark eyes drifted along the streets—people, shops, cars, traffic lights blinking steadily. If Akiteru was bright, then his brother would have been...

 

A stretched out smile from ear to ear.

 

Lopsided glasses that fell as he was scooped up in Akiteru’s arms.

 

Akiteru calling him, shouting with the same delight as chimes picking up a breeze, as if he was born with a mouth to call his name.

 

“Kei,” it fell from Kuroo’s lips as a fluttery whisper, but it stopped the blond in his tracks immediately no matter how quiet it sounded against the black noise of Tokyo’s streets.

 

A chime ringing.

 

A drop of water falling into a still black pool.

 

Kuroo stopped when he realized the blond had stopped walking and turned around. His eyes glanced at the stock-still figure, the cigarette still tucked between his fingers, the hand still hanging loosely on his mouth. “What?”

 

The blond lowered his eyes as he began walking again, not waiting for Kuroo to fall into step with him. He passed by with a mumbled, “It’s better not to be remembered.” A steady stream of smoke left in his wake.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

With eyes wide, arms splayed open across both sides of his bed, Tsukishima stared at his ceiling—flat and white—with terrified eyes and realization only truly falling upon him fast and heavy like a sudden car crash. Yes, a car crash on an empty street. Two cars that shouldn’t have met colliding at full force into one another. That was what this was. Tsukishima turned his head to the side and stared at the full-length mirror propped on the closet wall. Reflection met reality with the afternoon sun filtering through the thin curtains.

 

Somehow, he had agreed to pretend to be himself. Well, not himself. He agreed to be Tsukishima Kei, the one that remembered everything, the one that was hungry for revenge that Tsukishima knew he should also harbor and would probably hold until it molded and turned sour in his heart had his memories resurfaced from the heavy black blanket. But, he felt none of that red rage. What he felt was a prick of curiosity and a bubble of frustration towards himself and his repressed past. They were vague emotions, a word he knew but couldn’t remember its name, an itch that bothered him but he could not scratch. They were all muffled noise, black noise, a television left on without a viewer to entertain.

 

He slowly propped himself up on his forearms and turned his attention away from the mirror and back to the other parts of his room, the tossed and tumbled white sheets of his bed, the organized desk in the corner, the nightstand beside him with his glasses and his keys with a dinosaur keychain Yamaguchi had gotten him back in middle school when he had gone to an amusement park. This was all Tsukishima Kei, but not the Tsukishima Kei that he was supposed to be for Kuroo Tetsurou. His stomach began to knot into a tightly wrapped coil as the man’s voice from the other day echoed in his mind.

 

They weren’t anything that he didn’t know himself, but hearing the words leave the strange man’s mouth made him all the more conscious of it. _Tsukishimas have gold eyes_ , he said with a sudden seriousness that had sent shivers dragging across his skin. There was a reverie to the statement that Tsukishima himself caught as he looked at his colored eyes when he got home later that day. Were they that gold? He had tugged his under eye and stepped closer to the mirror, inspecting the dark pupil that blended into the honey iris. He couldn’t see the gold in his eyes, just a dull, borderline piss-water yellow.

 

 _What do I have to do to be Tsukishima Kei_ , he had asked the other as their footsteps fell one after the other against the city pavement, weaving through the lunch crowd.

 

Kuroo had paused for a long moment and that irritating smirk spread across his lips with ease, his eyelids lowered making the turn of his lip all the more cunning. _The way you are now, cold and apathetic. Just be yourself and I’m sure that’s fine enough_.

 

Tsukishima had held back his laugh at the irony that left the other’s mouth, but offered a click of his tongue instead—insulted by the choice of words the bed-head haired man had used but not fully denying it either. Being himself was the last thing he wanted to be, and yet now he was going to be paid to do it. He had no other skin to slip on, no other names or characters he was supposed to become.

 

A sigh left him. Thinking about this so intently was useless. He had already agreed to the job. Tsukishima shifted his weight to one of his forearm as he reached around the bedside table for his phone. The time illuminated on the touch screen, a blur of hazy light he could only read if he placed the cellphone an inch away from his face: 2:20 P.M. Dropping his hand back onto the bed, he inhaled deeply as if the comfort of his room would give him courage and sense of security to mingle with his blood.

 

Tsukishima swung his long legs off the bed, getting out of warm white sheets to prepare for meet up with Kuroo again. He was supposed to get ready, but there wasn’t much to prepare for. After all, how hard could it be to be himself, to be Tsukishima Kei when he already was?

 

He would be Tsukishima Kei.

 

And, he would not.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

Tsukishima stared into brown, muddy eyes of a man who looked like a skunk without any of the wary demeanor of one. He stared into them because he had no other choice with the face pressing closer and closer until their noses could practically touch. While this was the scene, it was not romantic at all as one could imagine. In fact, from a distance, it probably looked like part of a comedy sketch—Tsukishima and his perfect posture with a head looking down at a relatively shorter man with a bleached striped mowhawk down the center of his hair leaning up into Tsukishima with a puffed chest and hands placed on his hips to assert whatever authority he was supposed to have.

 

Tsukishima could tell by the aggressive loudness, the bright open collared red button down and the flashy gold chain resting around his neck that this guy was no more than a lackey, a few positions higher than a newbie at best.  Tsukishima’s eyes shifted to the other men that stood in front of the entrance who shook their heads, let out loud exasperated sighs and rested their faces in the palm of their hands. This scene was nothing new to them, just a haphazard of the skunk’s personality.

 

“What do you think you’re doing here, pretty boy?” the words rolled like a constant set of wheels locked in his throat, rolling the syllables together that even sophisticated and elaborate philosophy would come out sounding like a four year old learning how to properly string longer words and sentences together, butchered and dropping pronunciation and enunciation to get out the phrases in a hurry, an ocean tide in his own tongue.

 

Before Tsukishima opened his mouth to answer honestly—he was there to meet Kuroo—a firm hand gripped the side of the skunk’s head, fingers sinking into the bleached strip, and pushing the other to the side, giving Tsukishima room to breathe and air that wasn’t a leftover cocktail of cigarettes masked with cheap cologne.  

 

“Oy, cut the crap, Yamamoto.” Kuroo clicked his tongue as he huffed a desperate sigh, shaking his head as the others had done. Tsukishima felt pity for those who would have to put up with the confidence-dripping member.

 

Turning his attention back to Tsukishima, his lips tugged into the familiar position. “Glad you could make it.”

 

“Not like I had a choice.”

 

“Oh, don’t say that,” he waved as if fanning away the nonsense in the air. Kuroo slung his arm around Tsukishima’s neck and began to pull the taller blond towards the doors of the building, a tower of steel and glass ready to pierce through heaven’s sky. “You have a choice just like everyone else. You had option B of saying no, but you went with A.” Tsukishima could hear the lips curl, a cat’s sly smile. “Personally, A is the better deal.”

 

“Isn’t that subjective?”

 

“Well,” the dark haired man leaned in and dropped his voice into a low whisper, “You and I, we don’t work that way. We’re in the business of subjectivity.” The words brushed the shell of his ear, made the curls of his hair there shift and tuck themselves in the small space in between. Tsukishima didn’t find the answer that clever and continued to let himself be drag into whatever plan the other had in mind. That was perhaps the best course when dealing with the underground scene such as this with underground men such as him. He would brace the crash of waves as a seashell, bracing it under the cover of sand until the moon stepped down from its thrown and the high tides followed suit.

 

Tsukishima followed Kuroo’s lead as he directed them around the hotel lounge. It was quiet, a pianist played in the corner a song that sounded like an endless cycle—yearning and lonely—complimenting the sinking sun leaving behind a wash of warm orange and brush strokes of magenta against the sky, filtering into the large glass windows towards the hotel’s restaurant. Tsukishima watched the broad back of Kuroo Tetsurou straighten, his hands fastening the middle button of his suit before slowing down his steps. His voice dropped again as he turned his head and looked back towards Tsukishima.

 

“I hope you’re ready to make your grand debut,” he whispered.

 

Kuroo didn’t stop to hear a reply. Instead, he faced forward again and brought them to the only table occupied in the large restaurant space. Tsukishima flickered over the suits and the faces and the waft of smoky warmth of whiskey. His eyes caught the black label bottle as the centerpiece among the men. They talked and they laughed and when one caught sight of Kuroo, they all latched on.

 

“You took your goddamn time pissing in the bathroom, Kuroo!” one shouted.

 

The others roared with the same jabs. Kuroo only responded by throwing his head back in laughter and answering that at least he wasn’t a pussy lightweight like the rest of them who couldn’t handle their booze. None of them had noticed Tsukishima. They had become hypnotized and entranced by Kuroo’s magnetism, his charisma and appeal. No one noticed him who stood just a few feet away, hands tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket. He wondered how long he’d have to stand here, was this still part of the plan? That was until a deep voice cut above all the rest without raising an octave higher than the steady keys of the piano being played.

 

“Kuroo, who did you bring?”

 

Tsukishima’s eyes fell upon the deep voice that belonged to the tall, broad built man who sat at what seemed to be the head of the round table. His face was just as expressionless as his, his voice just as flat—just as cold, just as apathetic and indifferent—simply noticing something in his field of vision that seemed off from the norm. He kept his gaze, firm, steady and sure—a king staring down at a wandering peasant entering his courtroom.

 

Kuroo took a step back to stand by Tsukishima’s side, the grinning Chesire smile breaking across his lips.

 

“Ushijima, this is Tsukishima Kei.”

 

The laughter disappeared, the ice clinking against the glass tumblers stopped. The silence slashed the air as swiftly as a reaper’s scythe. Tsukishima could feel the apprehension that fell upon those men in their suits with the warmth of the whiskey sliding down their throats, now uncomfortable, now too hot under their collars.

 

“Tsukishima?" He lifted a brow smoothly.  "Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” Ushijima asked with the same unbothered tone, unbothered by whatever legacy the Tsukishima name was supposed to have or the tragedies that carried in each stroke of its character. Whatever worry or fear Tsukishima was supposed to invoke with his mere presence dissolved in the presence of Ushijima who sipped his whiskey and motioned for the bottle to be passed to fill up the glass again.

 

A long lost yakuza heir to a dead family was still a long lost yakuza heir to a dead family. What kind of king would Ushijima be if he was afraid of the dead?

 

Ghosts weren’t as scary if people didn’t believe in them. 

 

Tsukishima was given choice A and choice B.

 

Tsukishima was a man in the business in subjectivity and chose A.

 

At this moment, as Ushijima stared down at him with a drop of curiosity in a vast Saharan desert of indifference, Tsukishima wished he had chosen B.

 

Or if anything, was told he had no choice at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
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> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He clicked his tongue and curled his fingers, motioning Tsukishima to hand them over. He sighed heavily and audibly as he fished into his pockets to pull out the pack and lighter. Tsukishima tapped one out and handed it to Kuroo, but kept the lighter. “I wasn’t joking. I don’t want to see an adult man cry because he punched a brick wall and burned himself in a span of five minutes.” He flicked the lighter and held it up. The glow of the flame illuminated Kuroo’s lips with the cigarette tucked neatly between them. If the smirk had ever disappeared from the man’s face, it came back just as quickly and with more vitality to it. Tsukishima wished he said nothing as he always had. Nothing, not even the truth.

How tight should he clench his fist and how strong should his jaw tense? How narrow should his eyes be behind the rectangular black-framed glasses? Should his lips have thinned into a tight straight line? How loud should his voice be when he answered, if he answered? Would cold and quiet as usual be enough or would it be better to raise it a level louder, perhaps slip in a growl between the words as if he was actually mad, as if he actually understood who Ushijima was to him in this situation? Tsukishima thought all of this as he watched the man’s eyes flicker up and down him—pathetically on the skinny side of lean, glasses, leather jacket over a hoodie, jeans and boots. He was as nonthreatening as he could get. Compared to the costumes of suits and ties, Tsukishima looked like a kid.

 

“So,” Ushijima said as he shifted his eyes away, having enough of a look at Tsukishima to understand who exactly the blond was in relation to him. He took a slip of his whiskey and let his attention fall back onto the screen of his phone, deeming whatever he looked at much more interesting than the son of a ghost king. Despite that, he continued the conversation—out of obligation or subconsciously perhaps. Whatever Tsukishima said after would not even register remotely in his mind, not even bother any of the working nerves in his brains that would transmit the information. Whatever Tsukishima said would be a distant babbling of words, a mouth opening and closing like a fish snatched out of the water and tossed onto the sand. “What can I do you for?”

 

Tsukishima didn’t know how to answer even if Ushijima would not hear him. Kuroo didn’t exactly prepare him well for this part. What exactly was the con? If scaring was all Tsukishima was supposed to do, that plan had fallen into a wide gap in the ground that only idiots would miss in its dark and infinite drop. He had settled that this Tsukishima Kei wanted revenge, but something felt off in that plan with the way Ushijima ignored him now. Besides, what did revenge sound like? How did it look? How sweet or foul does revenge taste after aging 17 years?

 

“You see, Tsukishima’s here because--” Kuroo began, only to be cut off early and quickly.

 

He didn’t lift his gaze from his phone as he chided, “Kuroo, I wasn’t talking to you. My question was for your guest, the kid.” He waved his hand towards the end, like stirring up his mind, trying to remember a name that was so easily forgotten. The past for Ushijima remained the past. Tsukishima was the very definition of thoughts already buried six feet deep.

 

Kuroo didn’t seem phased by being cut off so easily. He kept his composure, but Tsukishima noticed the slight tension along the side of his neck and how tight his shoulders seemed to look underneath the suit. His eyes had lingered for too long, kept his mind on someone else non-objectively for too long that he was caught. He was caught not being the Tsukishima Kei he was supposed to be at that moment, whatever or whoever that was supposed to be—mannerisms and thoughts that he had yet to work out.

 

Ushijima, noticing the silence when he didn’t zone out, said as he looked up from behind eyes slightly covered by the tips of his hair, “Did a cat catch your tongue?”

 

The excuses could not come fast enough, so he settled on the one thing contradictory to his profession: he told the truth. Of course, he padded it a bit with the fake confidence of one character he had formed and the slyness of another and the deviant smirk of the black cat beside him who caught him with timing. So, even if it was the truth, it sounded nothing like it. That’s what revenge sounded like, didn’t it?

 

His eyes crinkled at the edges and he let out a forced huff of a laugh as he brushed his hand along the nape of his neck, feeling sweat breaking the surface, but gladly only something he noticed and felt. “I’m sorry if I’m intruding on your dinner,” he began. “I just ran into Kuroo-san the other day and he was telling me about the group.” Tsukishima threw in a soft laugh. “To be honest, I’ve been so removed from this life for so long I just wanted to see what life my father and brother led while I was still too young to really remember anything.”

 

The man didn’t glance back at Tsukishima, but his lips twitched as if acknowledging the answer—or, reacting to whatever he saw on the glowing touch screen. Tsukishima’s eyes lingered on the slightest of facial movements on the typically expressionless face. “Hmmm, that so?” The deep voice rumbled out of trained habit. Tsukishima wasn’t even sure if he was listening until he continued, “Isn’t there a saying about curiosity?”

 

His eyes finally eased up, but fell on Kuroo who flinched slightly under the stare. “If I remember, it can kill a cat. But, I’m sure you’re smarter than those animals.”

 

Tsukishima maintained his smile as he pulled one hand out of his pocket and checked his watch. “I’ve come to learn the opposite.” He clicked his tongue as he gave a slow shake of his head. “I wish I could talk to you longer, but I have somewhere to be.” His gold eyes flickered up back to Ushijima. “I’m sure we’ll meet each other again.”

 

“Kuroo, since you’ve brought our guest, it should only be right that you walk him where he needs to be.”

 

The usually charming man beside him didn’t reply, but instead, shoved his slender hands into his pockets and pivoted on his foot with the grace of a cat flicking its tail and turning to leave. Tsukishima turned too and followed behind, shoving his hands into his jacket pocket again. The laughter never returned though the clinking of glasses did. Murmurs and whispers trailed after them, echoing softly against the walls of the hotel. Those hushed voices would keep up behind them, only giving them silence and peace when they were back in the city, wandering through the back alleys. Tsukishima occasionally turned his head and watched people pass back and forth through the narrow ends of the path that led back to the public sidewalks. They didn’t notice the two black silhouette figures that slipped on just the other side. He figured that if they were as good of people as people could usually be, they’d never notice even if one of the two screamed.

 

It was a long way before the broad back stopped. Stopped, but still remaining as silent as ever. Tsukishima breathed out and rubbed his eyes with his fingers, feeling the tension from the hotel lifting off of him and leaving his body tired. With a whisper of exasperation in his voice, because he was too worn to really throw in more effort, he asked, “What the fuck was that?”

 

Kuroo responded to a swift punch to the brick wall. While it might have seemed impressive, the man hissed and pulled his fist back into his body. The dimly lit alley only allowed Tsukishima to be able to make out the high points of Kuroo’s nose, the cut of his cheekbones, and the reflectiveness of his eyes if he positioned his face a certain way. “Fuck,” the other cursed as he nursed his fist, surely cut and bloodied and throbbing with pains of an idiot. “God that fucking hurts.”

 

“Of course it would. It’s a fucking brick wall.”

 

After a minute or two of Kuroo groaning, he finally asked, “Hey, can you lend me a cig?”

 

“Are you going to burn your fingers off too?”

 

He clicked his tongue and curled his fingers, motioning Tsukishima to hand them over. He sighed heavily and audibly as he fished into his pockets to pull out the pack and lighter. Tsukishima tapped one out and handed it to Kuroo, but kept the lighter. “I wasn’t joking. I don’t want to see an adult man cry because he punched a brick wall and burned himself in a span of five minutes.” He flicked the lighter and held it up. The glow of the flame illuminated Kuroo’s lips with the cigarette tucked neatly between them. If the smirk had ever disappeared from the man’s face, it came back just as quickly and with more vitality to it. Tsukishima wished he said nothing as he always had. Nothing, not even the truth.

 

He watched the filter glow a bright orange in the dark alley. His eyes followed the stream of smoke that left with Kuroo’s exhale and rose high, breaking and scattering like dust when it reached the dull, yellow light.

 

“So?” Tsukishima spoke again. “What the fuck was that?”

 

“That was Ushijima,” Kuroo answered.

 

“If I was supposed to scare him, I hope you realized that failed.”

 

“Well, it would have been a miracle if you did. No, you were only there to scare the guys around the table.”

 

“Then…” Tsukishima trailed before he continued, his eyes shifting to the corner to glance over at Kuroo, but could only make out his darkened profile and the bright burn of the tip of the cigarette. “What are you mad about?”

 

The night air was cold and crisp that it made Kuroo’s silence even more poignant. Tsukishima shifted the weight from one foot to the other feeling regret now settle into his stomach. He shouldn’t have taken on this job. While he had accepted long ago that everyone had secrets, secrets tucked in a black box that should never be opened or touched by another the same way Pandora’s box should never have been unlocked and giving the world chaos and destruction and all the other things that would lead to humankind’s extinction, Tsukishima felt that Kuroo’s secret was something he’d have to know or else he wouldn’t fare well in the end.

 

The black haired man dropped the cigarette, now a stub, and crushed it under his foot. “Something buried in the past,” he answered. He turned his head now and his warm eyes, Tsukishima could tell, followed down the features of his face. “God, it’s fucking scary how much you look like them with the contacts and glasses. You sure you’re not related to the family?”

 

Tsukishima offered a shrug as his response. He would keep his secret too, locked in its heart, caged behind his ribs and wrapped around muscle and flesh and skin. He would keep it buried too, but unlike Kuroo, no one—not even Ushijima—would be able to see it.

 

“I have work to go to,” Tsukishima said, beginning to grow uncomfortable under Kuroo’s gaze that seemed a bit to keen to fit him into whatever puzzle he had put together in his mind. “But about the payment--”

 

The word sparked the other man back into action, electricity finally flowing through nerves and wires in his brain—telling him he had things to do than stare at a face in a dimly lit back alley trying to recall the dead. He fished in his back pocket and neatly rolled wad of bills. Tsukishima quickly caught it and was reassured by the weight in his hands. He didn’t need to count to know that the day’s wage was there.

 

“Thanks.”

 

Kuroo ran a hand through his hair again, having pieces stand up again by just ruffling through it. “I’ll call you when I need you again.”

 

Tsukishima nodded, but wondering if Kuroo could see the slight shift of his head in the light, said, “Okay.” He began to take his steps, finding a way out of the back alleys before Kuroo called out to him. It wasn’t particularly loud, but it bounced off the walls and the metal dumpsters that amplified its sound, warm and a bit husky.

 

“Be careful, okay? Take the long way to work just in case and never turn back.”

 

Tsukishima didn’t turn around and kept steadily walking. “I’m fine,” he answered, a response that became engraved on his tongue that he reserved only to quell his mother’s anxieties. He was thankful that Kuroo could not see him, his face or the bob of his Adam’s apple along his throat as he swallowed thickly. Did he open up to concern so easily like a flower blooming with the slightest touch of sun?

 

This was not the Tsukishima Kei Kuroo was supposed to know.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

The call never came, not the next day or the next week. The burner phone that he had used specifically for Kuroo never rang or beeped with a text. It remained dead silent. Tired of carrying three phones at a time, Tsukishima figured that he could always keep that phone at home and if Kuroo did ever call, he was sure he could always get back to it later in the night since that was how the underground life worked, everything came alive at night in shadows and alleys as if corruption and greed and shady deals were allergic to sunlight and brightness that was man-made.

 

The absence of Kuroo gave Tsukishima opportunity to slide back into his old job, slipping on skin that wasn’t his, names that weren’t his. He could speak lies without an ounce of truth and be someone other than himself. Every breath was inhaled and exhaled with relief, with comfortability, with a world made and controlled by him—no dark past, no secrets to uncover, no memories suppressed.

 

So, that was how he ended up in a hotel room again, next to another blacked out CEO whose wallet was now empty of its cash. He slipped on his clothes again, freshly stepping out from the shower, and closed the door behind him. Tsukishima began to count the money as he leaned against the traffic light pole, waiting for the crosswalk to turn green. His work was such a hypnotizing routine that his surroundings faded into a hazy blur. That was perhaps the first signs that he was losing his touch, getting too comfortable, being less observant and keen and more open. He nearly stumbled into the speeding traffic when he felt words brush against the shell of his ear—a warm summer wind to compliment the eyes.

 

“Just got out of the shower?”

 

Before Tsukishima got hit, a hand wrapped around his arm and pulled him back safely to the sidewalk. He turned around with eyes narrowed to slits, brows furrowed and lips twisted into a grimace. “Don’t do that,” he growled as he ran his hand behind the ear, now burning from the blood that rushed there.

 

His heart began thumping with the rush of fear and panic. He leered at Kuroo for a long while before turning back to face the crosswalk now with a green light and fisted his money into his pocket. But as he stepped onto the street, the clack of polished shoes followed behind him, sauntering with each easy step.

 

“Your hair’s all wet still,” Kuroo finally began as he reached out and ruffled the short wispy curled ends of blond hair. Tsukishima smacked it away as he continued and tried to pick up his pace, but his long legs did not prove any more of an advantage than before. “Didn’t your mother teach you to dry your hair properly or else you’ll catch a cold?”

 

Tsukishima bit back, “She also told me not to talk to strangers.”

 

“But, we’re not strangers.”

 

“What’s my name then?”

 

“Tarozaemon.”

 

“Not even close.”

 

“Suzuki?”

 

“Now you’re just choosing the most common name.”

 

Kuroo chuckled though Tsukishima didn’t mean to be funny. The other picked up his pace until he caught to Tsukishima’s side and tugged his hoodie up onto his head and slinging his arm around his neck. “Well, you’re just playing dirty. You never told me what your name was,” he said, “And I even asked twice.”

 

“I’m not going to tell you my real name out of pity.”

 

“Would asking three times work like a charm?”

 

Tsukishima tried to pull out of the hold, but the sturdy arm kept him locked. “I’m not some goddamn genie.”

 

They weaved down the less packed streets together, one arm slung around the other’s neck. The crowd paid them no mind. They were dangerous, thus, they became invisible to everyone else even in plain sight. Kuroo leaned into Tsukishima’s body as they walked, using him for some sort of leverage though he didn’t understand why. “You smell like strawberries,” the other commented during their walk, a walk that seemed to be leading nowhere, but by the slight turn of Kuroo’s foot, Tsukishima noticed that there was a direction, just not one he could figure out yet. Tokyo may be a city he was born in, a city that had cradled him in its bosom, but a city that he had fled from for too long to be truly familiar with it.

 

“It’s the hotel’s shampoo,” Tsukishima answered.

 

The other hummed in response.

 

“Kuroo, where are we going?”

 

“Giving some dead men some hope.”

 

Tsukishima’s lips twisted as he tried to digest the words. He hated the vagueness of Kuroo’s answers as if he should be able to figure out whatever plan he had in his head, as if he shared the same thoughts. “I hate working with you,” he admitted in a huff. “I don’t like wandering into things blind.”

 

“You’re so used to routine,” Kuroo chided. “To be a better con artist, you have think on your toes.”

 

“Are you telling me I’m bad?”

 

“No,” he replied. Kuroo leaned forward so that Tsukishima could see his face fully if he turned his head slightly. The smile curled at the edges and the eyes glimmered with the neon lights of the clubs and bars that it could catch. “I’m helping you become even greater. So good, you’ll fool people into believing you’ve made water into wine.”

 

The words cycled in his ear, swirled in his mind leaving him unguarded and his mouth free that only the most mundane thought slipped off his tongue. “How did you know where I was?”

 

“Coincidence.”

 

Tsukishima lowered his head, allowed the hood to fall forward to hide his face. He continued walking now, silent as always.

 

What had he learned since he had started this practice? There was no such thing as coincidences, only the perfect timing of a con.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait for this chapter. Lack of inspiration and Los Angeles humidity got to me. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They raced to him, hugged him, and clung to him. They admired him as if they were blind men who could finally see, appreciate the moon’s light instead of the sun. While the moon was not as radiant, it was just as beautiful, just as treasured, just as a guiding light to them than any other in the darkness. They swallowed him whole, drowning him out. He wished Kuroo’s arm was still there, a buoy in this tide of suits that was representative of home, but not a home he remembered.

They captured him in their arms, gathered him, swallowed him whole like a drop of ink falling into a glass filled to the brim with water. They turned the black drop into a dull gray and mixed and swirled it a bit more until the color dissolved clear. They had all taken him and drowned him.

 

Tsukishima did not expect this when Kuroo led him to a hostess club, dark and thick with heavy scented perfumes that clashed against one another—vanilla clashing with rose clashing with musk and peonies, fighting with one another under the haze of smoke and the fragrance of whiskey, bourbon and wine. His temples began to throb slightly just taking a foot into the establishment and he was prepared to turn tail and leave if only Kuroo’s arm was not locked around his neck so tightly. He led them without leading them through bodies cladded thinly with wispy dresses and heels thin and long enough they were weapons themselves. All the women eyed Tsukishima, read the turns of his hair down to the dirt of his shoes before they smiled, the same cunning of a smile that Kuroo flashed. Slowly, they turned back to their guests, not dropping where they had left off as if they had never ignored the clients at all. They poured the drinks with the same elegance and grace of practiced hostesses at tea ceremonies. Tsukishima admired them because he was one of them, and their smiles read that they knew.

 

You could never lie to a woman after all. They had been born with the instincts of survival.

 

They wandered further and further back where the open lounge booth space narrowed into a slim hallway with doors lining each side. Tsukishima could only guess what was behind the more private rooms, soundproofed and sealed off from the rest—offering the brothel’s discretion. Tsukishima let his gaze fall from those doors and looked straight ahead to the double doors at the end of the corridor. Oak gleaming under the fluorescent lights.

 

Tsukishima turned his head to Kuroo. He was going to ask what the game plan was. What was he supposed to say to whoever were behind those doors? Questions bubbled within him as he grew to hate the uncertainty and unpredictable nature of whatever plot Kuroo had dragged him into. But, his mouth gaped open and shut, a fish out of water, forgetting which words should come out first. He didn’t want to sound weak and that was exactly what the black haired man would say if he heard any of the questions.

 

Kuroo must have noticed the floundering lips because he turned his head too, stopping and jerking Tsukishima into a halt before he choked. “What?” The smile crept on his lips in small inches, climbing up the steps into a lazy grin, “My beautiful face made you at a lost for words?”

 

“Please,” Tsukishima gagged as he turned his head the other way.

 

“Aw, don’t be so shy, Tsukki,” the other cooed.

 

His heart banged against its cage. Tsukishima turned his head sharply, startling Kuroo too. He clenched his jaw to ease the panic thrumming in his nerves. “What did you call me?”

 

“Hey, why are you acting so rattled? You won’t give me your name, so what else am I supposed to call you?”

 

Tsukishima could not think of a good enough explanation or justification to stop Kuroo from using that name. That name was reserved for a normal and ordinary life, for a smiling face with freckles that crossed over from cheek to cheek with the same multitude as stars and constellations. It was not meant for dim lit brothels and banging walls, not with an air thick with intoxication and thrown out inhibition. It was not meant for Kuroo Tetsurou and this past life he insisted he slip on like familiar skin.

 

“Just not that,” he muttered under his breath.

 

“What was that?” Kuroo leaned forward, his warm scent coaxing Tsukishima to repeat himself. He would have too, if he had answered a second sooner, didn’t leave that hesitant pause between Kuroo’s question and his answer for thoughts that said that the nickname kind of sounded nice with a deeper and growl of a voice or the way the last syllable curled his lips around his teeth into a smile that would’ve been captivating if it were kinder.

 

Timing for Tsukishima, it seemed around Kuroo Tetsurou, was horrible.

 

The double door opened and a loud voice echoed down the hallway, “Boss!” The two turned their heads and saw the bleached stripe head and squared jaw of Yamamto a foot inside and outside the office. At the sight of Kuroo, however, he was bounding up to the other with great leaps and strides that it looked like he would have crashed into Kuroo’s body from his bubbling excitement.

 

“Are they all in there?”

 

“Yup, they’re all there!” Yamamoto beamed, smile tugging wide.

 

“Good, let’s go, Tsukki.”

 

Tsukishima flinched with the name, but didn’t say anything. He had lost his chance with the pause, lost it to the silence of doubt and consent. Yamamoto giving Tsukishima his attention now puffed out his chest and leaned forward. “Don’t know who you are, but you’re meeting a bunch of important people in there. So don’t fuck it u—“

 

Kuroo slapped the side of the skunk man’s head. “Cut it out.” He pulled Tsukishima down the hall, brushing past Yamamoto who hissed as he rubbed his skull. It didn’t take long for the other to recover, still rubbing at the throbbing pain as he fell into step behind Kuroo. Tsukishima caught a peak at more suits walking around in a lavish office, as brightly lit as the hallway they were walking through.

 

When they reached the doors, Kuroo pulled open the other that remained closed and tugged Tsukishima forward. The twist of the door left a silence. Each time they walked anywhere, it seemed a hush strangled whoever talked, rippling until everyone forgot how to speak. There were about forty or perhaps even fifty men wearing uniformed suits, black suits, white shirts, black ties with a gold clip that stopped the smooth streamline color.

 

“Let me see him,” an old, growl of a voice spoke up, loud across the silence that sealed everyone else’s lips. The bodies of suits parted, waves listening to the command of a holy branch waved by a prophet. Amongst them, sitting comfortably in the plush leather seat wearing a more formal wash of navy blue kimono and varicose veins web working over hands that rested ontop of a cane, was an old man with strict and narrowed eyes, wide shoulders and a hunched back. He stood up, propped by his stick and made his way over to where Tsukishima stood.

 

The old veiny hands cupped his face roughly, thumbs curled behind his ear as he twisted Tsukishima’s face left and then right. And when both sides of his profile had settled into the old man’s eyes—one milky white from cataracts—he ran his thick index fingers in circles along his cheekbones near the ends of his eyes. “Young master,” he croaked, a voice shaking with age, but still firm and strong—a reminder of the strength in his youth. His hands laxed slightly, but continued to cup the face with the same gentle and ease in the crinkles of the crow’s feet near his eyes of a grandfather reunited with his grandson. The voice echoed familiar in Tsukishima’s ears in his hoarse rasp with certain syllables and the way the downturned eyes smiled without the aid of his lips—gleaming with tears held back, maintaining his masculinity for the other men around them. The grovel in the sound reminded Tsukishima of warm hands stroking through his hair to comfort a face dripping with tears. The deep smile lines that encased his lips stirred the memory of a slice of strawberry shortcake from a local bakery.

 

Everything about the man that smoothed over sharp cheekbone and pale skin left a memory on his tongue, a grain of sugar on his palette as he tried to lap up the familiar sweetness.

 

“You’re the image of your father. Yes,” the old man breathed out with a touch of nostalgia marbling his words, “A spitting image of him when he was around this age.”

 

Tsukishima recalled the family photo that his mother kept on her night table, a keepsake of happier times or perhaps a warding charm to bad luck and ill will that lingered just over the threshold of the door. He tried to see what that sharp jaw and angular face and those proud crinkled eyes in the faded old photo would look like if he rewound time. Would the statement really be true? Tsukishima wanted to ask his mother, hear the truth spill from her like warm tea being poured out, easing the tension away from his shoulders with its mere fragrance swirling in the steam.

 

“Ah, well,” the old man backtracked as he touched the edges of Tsukishima’s lips, “Maybe not a spitting image of him. You have your mother’s mouth after all.”

 

His lips lifted and he crooked his head, finding a homely comfort when he leaned into the old, veiny and age spotted hand. “Is that a bad thing?”

 

He laughed, loud and let one hand fall from Tsukishima’s face as he let it drop to his shoulder, gripping it, feeling flesh and bone and a real person underneath his fingertips. The old man squeezed him with his life, and never answered the question. What did it mean to have his mother’s mouth, the one he used to smirk or smile or frown and let lies slip out with his skilled tongue? Was that good? Was it bad?

 

Did he inherit her prayer too? The one she uttered in desperate and breathless whines as her body shook as she pounded fist against wood to fight the slumber that had blanketed over her long time friend. Would he one day repeat those three words in the same way? What were they again?

 

Something that sounded weak.

 

Something that sounded burdensome.

 

Something that sounded like nothing he would ever want someone else to hear.

 

Vulnerable. Weak. Pathetic.

 

Tsukishima brushed the words as he smiled down at the old man and patted the hand that gripped his shoulder, digging into jacket and soft cotton and rubbing into the imprints and scratch marks of the sex earlier in the day.

 

The old man breathed in, inhaling back whatever tears that wanted to spill and touching the corner of his eyes to discretely catch whatever tears welled up at the corners. He placed his hands on his hips and stood tall and proud. “Gentlemen, young master Tsukishima has come home.”

 

It was such a bold statement, a statement that made the waves fall back into place, drowning pharaohs and soldiers and horses. They raced to him, hugged him, and clung to him. They admired him as if they were blind men who could finally see, appreciate the moon’s light instead of the sun. While the moon was not as radiant, it was just as beautiful, just as treasured, just as a guiding light to them than any other in the darkness. They swallowed him whole, drowning him out. He wished Kuroo’s arm was still there, a buoy in this tide of suits that was representative of home, but not a home he remembered. 

 

Not his mother’s scent of vanilla and lavender.

 

Not the drama she watched late into the evening despite work the next day.

 

Not Yamaguchi’s laughter in his room as he read a new chapter in those weekly Jump! magazines.

 

Not the absence of busy streets.

 

Not the gentle call of crickets in its stead.

 

Nothing about these bulky arms and stiff fabric and welled up tears on manly faces was home. Not any part of it. But, there were fragments, pieces of his father like the roaring laughter of the old man observing the scene in that one good eye he still had left. It rang haunting and strong. In the round, smooth face of one of the younger boys—yet still older than him—that hugged him, a whisper of his brother left behind. He could catch it, broken off chips and shards that were washing up onto shore.

 

So, when he closed his eyes, he felt his own heart unfurl behind its cage, weep its own tears and his fingers reached out and grabbed whatever he could, clutching too, cradling pieces he feared would be swept away by the tide if he didn’t pick them up soon enough.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

They settled into the seats of the soft leather. Tsukishima sat on the edge of his seat, nervous. He wondered what he was supposed to do, wondered what the old man across from him expected, wondered what ran through Kuroo’s mind, wondered what his mother was doing at home right now. The last one lingered a bit longer, slowly disappearing like her finger circling the rim of her teacup as she thought to herself, drifted down memories and regrets without noticing him catching her in the act.

 

Tsukishima absentmindedly ran his index finger over the rim of the glass of whiskey poured a third of the way without a few ice cubes taking up space.

 

“You have questions, don’t you?” The old man’s voice broke his thoughts.

 

Tsukishima shifted and the ice clinked against the sides of the glass. He did have questions, hundreds and thousands bubbling in his head. But, he didn’t want to seem eager or desperate or blow his cover. His hands gripped the drink tighter, with more strength he might have cracked it. “I…” Tsukishima’s lips twisted before he continued, honest again the second time without the embellished sly smile or confidence he carried with Ushijima, “I don’t know where to start really.”

 

“Well then, how about my name?”

 

“Your name?”

 

“Ukai Ikkei.” The man chuckled as his lips stretched into an easy grin, flashing a set of ivory teeth, a few yellowed from age and perhaps smoke. “See, ain’t that easy?”

 

Tsukishima caught on and laughed, ducking his head. He looked up from between his lashes, the side of his face resting in his palm.  “How did you—”

 

“We never saw each other much and you were such a young boy. It’s hard to remember things that don’t stick around for a while.”

 

Tsukishima lowered his eyes, studied the polished coffee table with a half used ashtray and a ring stain in the corner of the table, looked like coffee though it could be anything. Kuroo must be a coffee drinker, he thought. His eyes drifted back to Ukai who stared at him intently, reading past the surface of his skin, seeing the highways of his veins, the structures of his bones and organs. “How did you all survive?” he asked. He recalled the story Kuroo told about the Tsukishima group being exterminated, clan and all. And yet, here they were, standing, breathing, watching him with earnest eyes—eyes that expected too much out of him. He was neither his father nor his brother. Tsukishima hoped they realized that.

 

Ukai leaned back. His eyes closed and his joints popped with the slightest shift. His thick fingers ran along his short silver hair, bits gleaming when it caught the light above them. “It’s a long story. I don’t think it’s really something you’d care for really. The past is in the past.”

 

“No,” he said. “No, everyone’s past is my present.”

 

“Hey,” Kuroo tried chiming in, but Tsukishima ignored him.

 

The prayers of his mother’s lips left him. “Please, answer me.” His golden eyes looked at Ukai, bore into him, wrapped him up in its smooth warmth, eyes of a dead man passed onto his child who carried the same fire. “Help me and I’ll help you. That’s why you wanted Kuroo to find me, didn’t you? You need me.”

 

Ukai smirked, a twisted crinkle of a smile against a sagging face. “You are your father’s son, a spitting image to the bone. It’s frightening.”

 

Tsukishima curled his tongue in his mouth, kept his mother’s prayer from spilling out of him, the weak prayer, the vulnerable hymn, the psalm of the desperate.

 

Please.

 

Answer.

 

Help. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The noise has surely reached the other man’s ears. He could hear the crickets chirping and the cup of hot tea being placed back down on the wooden floor. “Ukai?” The voice called out to him, deep, a harmony of a bass string being plucked. His voice was smooth, concerned, kindness rounding out the corners.
> 
>  
> 
> Happy. 
> 
>  
> 
> Unguarded.
> 
>  
> 
> Deafening.

The boy stared at him earnestly even though he tried his best to hide it. But, Ukai Ikkei could see the gleam of anticipation in his eyes, wild and hungry underneath a subdued expression that looked leveled and bored. Ukai didn’t need to have both eyes working to sense the boy’s overwhelming thirst of questions, a pot boiling of whats and hows and whys and wheres. The five Ws and each a million under its name fought to leave his tongue.

 

Ukai took a good look at the blond curls, the slim face, and the kind eyes now misplaced with the passing of time. He settled into his seat, hands still folded on the polished cane. He took a deep breath in, took a lungful of the smoke that filled the room, the cocktail of bourbon and beer and whiskey in the air that pooled out of the open bottles and uncovered glasses. If he closed his eyes, he could just leap to that time. Yes, just a single hop over a stone and he’d be in his seat in the building separated from the main house, used as a hangout spot for all the men who needed a break. He’d be breathing in another room that smelled the same—the swirl of nicotine, menthol, sometimes a joint if one of the younger boys were around, and alcohol. It was a lethal combination, thick and boxed in the four walls, strong enough that it made you feel drunk and a bit high without drinking or smoking a thing.

 

He opened his eyes and saw the world fully again as he did in his youth, before age had began to eat the vision in his left eye, turned it into a cloudy blue that looked like the swirl of the milky way. This was seventeen years ago. His feet were propped on the edge of the coffee table. The rest of it was splayed with cards, crumpled up cash, a half smoked cig burning in an ashtray that needed to be dumped out, and glasses filled with amber liquid. They were all at ease. They were drunk and high without smoking or drinking a single damn thing.

 

It was the air, they all agreed.

 

It was the money, they flashed before they slapped it down onto the glass of the table, stirring the drinks with the impact, crumpled up portraits of Higuchi Ichiyou and a few Fukuzawa Yukichi if they were feeling more spendy and bold.

 

It was the life that could only be lived under the moon, they chuckled as they closed the curtains to the office, blocking the very same light they spoke of with admiration in the same breath.

 

“C’mon, Ukai. Join us for a round of poker,” one of the men said as he nudged Ukai’s leg with a grip on his knee, trying to jostle him back to life.

 

He clicked his tongue as he waved them away, propping his temple on a fist as he loosened the tie around his neck and let his eyelids close, heavy with the day’s work and fatigue finally settling in. “I’m tired, and I don’t want to rob y’all of your money,” he teased, his lips tugging into a Chesire grin with his eyes crinkling behind his closed lids.

 

“Master Tsukishima works you too hard, Ukai. Ya gotta tell him that sometimes. Stop spoiling him so much. He’s not running around in diapers anymore, y’know?”

 

“I don’t mind,” Ukai answered. He listened to the shuffling cards, the sound of the thick paper being slapped into piles. “He’s grown to be a good leader cause of me. I’m helping him become greater, reach the same potential his old man had too.”

 

Someone cackled from across the room. A beer bottle rolled against the floor until it clinked against the wall. “Hope he still doesn’t make you wipe the shit off his ass.”

 

The agreement came with a rise and crescendo of laughter like cymbals clashing together in a ripple and neverending as it made its way around the room, even settling into Ukai’s own lungs and shaking out of him too. Shaking legs, slapping hands, clinks of drinks and glasses. Ukai’s lips twisted into a half sneer, failing to disguise his own smile.

 

“Why don’t you put that much effort into your own grandson, Ukai?”

 

“He’s letting the brat be trained by the crows before he helps the kid. Did the same thing with his son while he was still green behind the ears.”

 

“That explains why everyone’s shit scared of Ukai!”

 

“You mean it’s not all those ugly spots and wrinkles?!”

 

Another roar of laughter came. It came ringing clear.

 

It rang happy.

 

It rang free.

 

It rang defenseless, careless, and deafening.

 

It rang while they hid themselves behind the moon. The last mistake of many hidden in the darkness they sheltered themselves in, the booze they drank dry, the smoke they took long drags of until their lungs despised the taste of air.

 

Ukai would always remember that sound. He would always remember the sight between his tired eyes, opened to slight slits to drink in such a strange and unconventional warmth—a family made for bandits and the despicable. He would never forget the sound, the sight because this was the red dust of suffering settling, showing him the consequences, squeezing the old man’s heart nearly two decades later, taking half of the world with his eye just a few months after. It came with a loud BANG! of the door being opened, slamming into the wall of the room inside. The intoxication, the high fizzled. Their faces paled and their minds dissolved back to sobriety as they took in the sight of blood dripping and oozing across the tan flesh. Red flowers, out of season, blooming against the white button down, spilling down the thick neck. The boy tried to catch his breath and leaned against the frame of the door. But, his life was splashing out of the cup as it was being swirled.

 

“Shi-Shira-Shiratorizawa’s at the front gates! They’re going after Master Tsukishima!” He managed to sound out as the other men in the room hurried to wrap his arms over their shoulders, their arms nestling around his waist, trying to move him to an open space on the couches.

 

The words crawled into Ukai’s ear, a centipede clicking its feet as it slithered its way in. He felt his heart sink into his stomach. The blood drained from his face. Ukai was the first to bolt up and out of the door. His eyes fell on the youngster, bloodied and wounded and never going to live to see another day.

 

“Find the mistress and the boys! Protect them at all costs!” Ukai shouted over his shoulder. “And kill those Shiratorizawa bastards.” The last words left his lips with a growl, as if he was dealing with some punks inching on Tsukishima terf, as if they were default predators. He didn’t comprehend the situation in his eyes red with rage, didn’t listen carefully to what the boy had said.

 

Tonight, they were not predators.

 

Tonight, they were very much prey.

 

His breath left him in large white puffs being blown back as he ran, barefoot across the lawn of the estate. The moon shone down on him, bright and brilliant and lonely in the hazy Tokyo smog. Not a single star there to keep it company. His feet sank into the dirt, freshly watered by the sprinklers. The grass left stains in his pants and the mud slipped between his toes. His legs and thighs will be sore, moving so swiftly and quickly, tricking his mind to believe he was twenty and still at the height of youth, still young enough to save the boy he raised, save his sworn brother’s son.

 

The moon shone down on him, lonely and knowing full well how it will end.

 

The stretch of lawn to the main house from the separated building seemed vast and infinite, much more wider and daunting at night than during the day. Ukai had gone off the stone path and cut diagonal, hoping he’d reach the Master’s room quicker. His mind raced. He’d still be in his office right now, drinking tea, sitting outside and enjoying the night view from the porch deck outside of the room. He wheezed as he ran, out of breath and not leaving enough time to inhale before exhaling. He could hear the screaming, the bullets firing, riddling bodies and walls with holes. He could taste the bitter rust of something not metal, but was close enough to it, like a thick fog that had settled onto the estate, suffocating him. He hurried on, despite it all. Hurried on, hurried on, trying to reach the moon before it slipped away, shed off its old skin as the night sky ate into the rock’s glow.

 

It took him ten minutes to reach the spot. Ukai could feel his heart squeeze and twist in his chest, ready to give. His eyes scanned the veranda in the dark, vision blurring and growing weaker with every tick of desperation. It was when he heard the shift of fabric that his eyes landed on the broad back figure, the reflected strands of pale gold hair, spun of the moon’s rays surely. He catches the profile, the high nose, the cut of cheekbone, the pale smooth skin.

 

His exhale comes out loud with shaking relief and he managed to take a few steps closer before falling to his knees. “Oh thank god,” Ukai heard himself say.

 

The noise surely reached the other man’s ears. He could hear the crickets chirping and the cup of hot tea being placed back down on the wooden floor. “Ukai?” The voice called out to him, deep, a harmony of a bass string being plucked. His voice was smooth, concerned, kindness rounding out the corners.

 

Happy. 

 

Unguarded.

 

Deafening.

 

“Ukai, what are you doing out there? Don’t have a heart attack on me, all right?” The tone sounded manly, but he could still hear the ringing of the young boy calling out to him, swinging his legs with feet unable to touch the ground beneath him. He was still just a boy.

 

Ukai laughed, breathless. He placed his hand on his knee to steady himself to get back up again. He brushed away the wet grass stains on his slacks as he made his way to the young man. They were so far away from the front gates. It felt like a dream. But which part of it was? The beginning with the bloodied boy stumbling into the building or this, Tsukishima Yoshimi looking up at him with honey-melted eyes, brows knitted confused and amused.

 

But, if he could indulge himself in dreams and reality and choose one to replace the other, a lot of things that didn’t exist would exist, like his son, Yoshimi’s father, a list of names with faces that began to blur with age. Reality now was at the front gates, storming its way in with guns and knives, taking blood for wine. Being drunk and high from the decay without drinking or smoking a thing. “Master Yoshimi, we have to leave now!”

 

“What’s wrong, Ukai?” His eyes follow where Ukai was staring just a moment ago, staring into darkness and trying to understand what the other side, blocked by the thicket of bushes and trees, looked liked.

 

“Shiratorizawa’s trying to get you. We need to get out.” He quickly reaches out to grip the man’s elbow, pulling him up onto his feet again, kicking over the tea pot and spilling out the tea water and leaves half steeped.

 

“Where are Kaori and the boys?”

 

“I sent the men to go find them.” Ukai flashed him a wide smile, one he always used when he knew Yoshimi would start to think the worst, as he always did. “Trust me, Yoshimi. I’m sure they’re fine.”

 

Yoshimi’s gaze flickered back to the old face, decorated with lines and spots, stamped with crows’ feet at the crinkles of his eyes. Ukai gave him dreams in place of reality, gave him dreams to suckle on to stop his worries, like a baby given a bib to soothe the hunger. Yoshimi was a strong man, a strong leader, but he was still a boy.

 

It’s a lie when people say that fear is the greatest immobilizing emotion.

 

If Ukai had to pick, it would be happiness. The only feeling to drop one’s guard, slow their bones, send their spirits off to another whom they called home. Happiness was dangerous. It made one comfortable. It’s toxic and addicting, leaving the worst withdrawals when the human body did not have enough or is deprived of it for too long. If they could pack it and push it like one of their other drugs, they would be making a fortune.

 

Happiness was deadly. It made you want to stay there, stay in that space.

 

Yoshimi’s movements grew slower as he got up, the happy relief washing over his face with the upward tug of his lips. “That’s good,” he breathed out.

 

And a bullet took him out then and there, in that happy space, in that space of comfortable ease and defenselessness. Happiness barreled itself through the middle of his forehead, tipped his body back with its force and sprayed brain matter and tissue and blood all over the white paper screens of the sliding doors of the room.

 

“Y-Yoshimi?” Ukai wasn’t sure if the name had managed to break through from his throat, suddenly thick as if he had drank a blue label scotch and it was finally settling in at the base where his adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. His old hands still held onto the slack forearm, body being pulled down by gravity—a spirit no longer claiming Yoshimi’s body as home. Ukai settled down onto the veranda and let his hands crippled with arthritis rake through the gold locks of hair. The back of Yoshimi’s head suddenly sticky and wet. He didn’t dare pull his hand away, already fearing how black the blood would look on his palm at night.

 

The old man settled the body down onto the porch, swiped away the tea that spilled around him. His eyes narrowed out across the fences and trees, searching for the sniper—less for revenge and more to ingrain in his mind what happens when one turned his back to reality. He never found the sniper, but he found his vision blurring. The sky blurring into a haze. The moon’s light being pushed out of the sky as easily as a paintbrush pushing away watercolor on a canvas. Ukai’s head lowered and saw bullet wounds piercing his body too, blooming at his lower stomach, a spot blooming near his heart, and one through his shoulder—the one that surely passed through Yoshimi too.

 

His eyelids began to feel heavy and his body became more like lead than fat, muscle, and bone. He collapsed besides Yoshimi on the veranda, their bloods pooling and mixing with one another. His head felt light, his throat tight.

 

Did he drink that night?

 

Did he smoke a joint with the boys?

 

Funny. He must have. It certainly felt like it.

 

“Pops,” a voice hissed beside his ear. “You better not fucking croak on me now! You’re as old as dinosaurs. How’re you already so weak with just a few tiny ass bullets, eh?” The laughter trembled. Dull sensations of fingers prodded over his chest. There was a thick smell, thick as rust and metal, thick as death wrapping his cold over a body. Ukai Ikkei, behind the meshed dots and haze of his closed eyelids, opened one eye slowly to catch sight of the shaggy ugly bleached blonde hair, the box dyed locks of his grandson leaning forward from behind him, cradling the upper half of his body into his chest.

 

“That how you treat your grandfather, you ungrateful dick?” he coughed, his voice hoarse and a laugh punctured with air. Ukai’s hand wavered as he tried to lift it. But, he managed to let it fall on top of the blond strands. He tugged it with all his strength, though by now it was no more than a gentle pull. “Keishin, you know I wouldn’t die until this ugly piss water hair is gone.”

 

The young boy clicked his tongue despite his falling tears and his fingers pressing harder and deeper into the wound that bubbled and pooled with his blood, red melting and spreading across the white button down. “You’re always going on and on about my damn hair. It ain’t happening, gramps.”

 

He smiled, sighing into Keishin’s arms—firmer and solid than anything else that he touched. “Then it looks like I’m stuck here for a little while longer.”

 

Ukai let his head fall to the side, catching sight of a body beside them—head covered with the familiar rich blue silk robes. It was still pitch-black night and silent. He rolled his head to the other side to not let the side burn into his memory anymore. Ukai shut his eyes close and laughed, laughed because he had already shed tears for the boy’s father and had none left for his son.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

How did they survive after that night?

 

They did what preys did.

 

“We hid,” Ukai said, his eyes closed. Memories splayed behind the meshwork behind his eyelids. “We scattered and burrowed ourselves in holes across the country. Many of them have yet to return.” Ukai chuckled as he slowly opened his eyes to stare at the perforated dots of the ceiling. “Can’t blame them. I’m sure they’ve settled down and made a good life for themselves. Families and friends and a life where high blood pressure are the largest of their worries.”  He coughed from his laughter, a rumbling echo of the other men followed.

 

“I kept in touch with Kuroo.” Ukai lowered his head so he was staring at Tsukishima again. “We’ve been all waiting for you to return, young master Kei. So you wouldn’t believe my skepticism and surprise when we heard he had found you. There have been a lot of false calls, but the fruits of our labor have paid off.”

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

“You said you wanted to help us and it’s true, we do need you just as you need us.” Ukai pulled himself up and walked around the table that divided them. He held Tsukishima’s chin tight in his knobby hands, spider veins stretching across the backside. He pulled his face up and stared down at him, a white universe and eyes so dark they were the purest form of black in an eye. “You’re going to take back what is rightfully yours. Kill Shiratorizawa. Bring the Tsukishima name back to its glory days.”

 

“Why couldn’t you do it before?”

 

“Who else but a Tsukishima to take back control of a world that only operates by night? It is in your name after all.”

 

Tsukishima’s head lowered as his chin was released. Was there all to it? What was in a name but strokes that formed characters? How did that define anything? They were all insane and senile if they thought all there was to taking back power and control resided in a name. If that was so, weren’t they forgetting the name his parents gave to him?

 

Kei. 

 

Firefly. Dots of light that are hard to see and can easily be killed. Useless light, guiding no one and nothing. Existing as flickers and captured to entertain. Pathetic and weak. His light was nothing like Akiteru. Bright light. The brightest. Any sort of light, sun or moon, or even the light of the Tokyo sky tree.

 

Tsukishima asked, “Do you know what happened to my brother then?”

 

Ukai stopped as he moved his hand back to his cane. His lips tugged down as he shook his head. “Unfortunately not. We only found his body in his room. It was cold by the time we got there.”

 

With his head lowered, Tsukishima could see Kuroo’s crossed arms beside him tighten, knuckles turning a deadly white before being released and the flood of pink and red of flesh colored his hands again.

 

“God, you Tsukishimas sure are a depressing bunch,” Kuroo said as he grabbed the decanter and poured himself a healthy helping of whiskey. Tsukishima’s eyes watched the amber liquid flow into Kuroo’s mouth as he downed the entire thing. The black haired man turned his head to the other side of the office, where the windows allowed the view of the sliver of a crescent moon above the high-rise buildings.

 

Kuroo finally turned back to Tsukishima. His brow lifted curious as to why he was being stared so intently at. “What?”

 

Tsukishima grabbed the empty glass that Kuroo held and poured more whiskey into it. Locking eyes again, he tipped back and downed the drink too, feeling the smoky burn wrap around his throat and exhale through his nose. He shifted and settled back into his seat and swirled the little bit of whiskey still at the bottom of the glass in his hand. He shrugged nonchalantly as he closed his eyes. “Nothing really,” he started, “Just curious how a cat got dragged into a murder of crows.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this rate, I'm going to be including all the HQ characters at one point or another and that character tag block will look ridiculous. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Tsukishima didn’t elaborate further, and perhaps he had grown tired of trying to dissect what each shift could mean, Kuroo rested his hand on the armrest and pushed himself off the couch. His other arm came swinging back to his side, but not without carding quickly through Tsukishima’s hair forward as if brushing against tall grass in an empty field. “Cats drag in lots of things,” he answered, tucking the hand back into his pocket. “Bad luck is one of them, too.”

The warmth of the whiskey had long disappeared from his throat, settling itself in the pit of his stomach—empty except for the half sandwich he ate in the afternoon and burned off in the hotel room. But, the summer eyes of warm browns and hints of a relentless sun stared back at him with narrowed lids and kept the heat much more present. Kuroo twisted in his seat, arm thrown on the back of the couch as he angled towards Tsukishima more, who maintained his façade through half hooded eyes. He knocked back the trickle of the drink that rested in the glass, feeling a dull burn slide down. He settled the glass back down onto the table, keenly aware of the gaze that followed his every movement, wary as it read him.

 

When Tsukishima didn’t elaborate further, and perhaps he had grown tired of trying to dissect what each shift could mean, Kuroo rested his hand on the armrest and pushed himself off the couch. His other arm came swinging back to his side, but not without carding quickly through Tsukishima’s hair forward as if brushing against tall grass in an empty field. “Cats drag in lots of things,” he answered, tucking the hand back into his pocket. “Bad luck is one of them, too.”

 

He left Tsukishima and Ukai with those words. Kuroo sauntered over to another group, joining in on their conversation with ease and taking up an offered beer as if this was all a backyard barbeque, a reunion of old friends and classmates instead of a room of people who were supposed to be very much dead, very much left in the past, but who were in fact in the present, living and breathing and taking up the space of the office that was at the end of a long corridor of a hostess club. 

 

“Don’t let his words bother you,” Ukai spoke up. He had followed Tsukishima’s gaze that lingered on Kuroo’s back before bringing his attention back to him again. He smiled, a toothy but nonetheless menacing and deviant smile as he tucked his cane under his chin to prop his head. “If Kuroo is good at anything, it’s knowing what to say to fuck up a person. Of course,” Ukai’s eyes fell to slits, aiming his stare at Tsukishima carefully—slicing him skull and soul. His voice fell lower and quieter, but the words that left him left a crawling sensation easing its way up his legs. “It only works if that person’s weak in the first place. Insecure, mentally weak. He reads it and uses it.”

 

Though the old man was speaking about Kuroo, Tsukishima could understand how the Tsukishima group could have lasted so long, why his father worked Ukai to the bone even in his old age. It was the way the words slinked out of his mouth is a slow and quiet drawl. It was the way his eyes narrowed that the shadows of his lashes and the closeness of his eyelids made any of the whites in his eyes disappear into black—a demon watching and lurking underneath the surface. Ukai had a taste for blood; one so strong and so overwhelming that anyone would be frightened.

 

Tsukishima swallowed the tension that lodged itself in his throat, fearing to let his eyes drop its contact. If he showed the slightest hint of fear, he’d be dead in an instant.

 

The terror dissipated however as the smile eased into something more grandfatherly and welcoming. “But, he’s a good kid. Best I know.” A chuckle escaped him, throaty and raspy. “You should trust him.” 

 

The combination of words that formed the sentence sounded strange, paired with such a loving smile from an old man who could easily slide from one persona to another—extremes of one another—evoked a sound to leave Tsukishima’s throat, a noise that blended between a scoff and a chuckle that he had to hide behind his hand. “Trust him?” he asked, quirking a brow, shifting his eyes to Kuroo, whose arm was slung around another’s neck, knocking back some of the beer. Tsukishima caught the slightest movement of his head about to turn, so he ducked his gaze back to Ukai before he was caught with a look that resembled interest.

 

“I don’t think I can see that happening,” Tsukishima answered. He dropped his eyes to the edge of the coffee table, flickered his gaze over the wood oak border with carved designs. If anything in the office seemed out of place, it was the table. The warm artistic brown clashing with the monochromatic sleekness of the room—black and silver metal. Tsukishima dropped his hand and trailed a finger over the design, following the curves and sinking into the sanded grooves. “I’m not a trust kind of person.”

 

“Can’t even trust me?”

 

Tsukishima’s eyes quickly lifted to look at the old man’s face, a lip curving into a smile. The cataract eye glinting at the catch of light as the corner of his eyes crinkled. His gaze rested on the features for a long while before dropping his attention back to the table. Tsukishima continued to defy his profession and continued to let the truth slip off his tongue. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t trust you at all.”

 

A silent pause settled between them. Tsukishima slowed his movements and kept his eyes occupied on anything but lifting them up to meet Ukai. He feared he had said the wrong thing, feared the hoard of crows would tear him to bits and pieces as they suspected a traitor. But, Ukai threw his head back and let a deep and rumbling laugh leave him. Tsukishima caught the jostling leg from his lowered view. Deciding it was safe, he lifted his gaze again, catching sight of the carefree, rumbling laughter. When Ukai had settled down, he caught Tsukishima’s eyes with his own.

 

“You’ve got good instinct,” Ukai cracked as he leaned back into his seat. He inhaled deeply, his chest rising as his head fell back onto the back of the sofa. He closed his eyes and left the smile on his lips, carved with nostalgia and smoothed down with memories bittersweet. “I guess that’s your mother’s blood in you.” 

 

His father’s son.

 

His mother’s blood.

 

The second son to the Tsukishima name.

 

Staying in the room, sitting across from Ukai, pulling apart loose strands at the hem of his story, he grew overwhelmingly irritated, frustrated. Tsukishima clenched his jaw slightly, dug his nail into the groove of a curve as he kept his head duck and the frame of his glasses to block his eyes from Ukai who watched him. He didn’t like this job after all. He didn’t want to be Tsukishima Kei after all, not this Tsukishima Kei at least. He desired the comfort of slipping on characters that were not him, shaped by fabrics and tastes. He wanted to lure in big prey and rob them of their money. At least then, he’d be in control of something, control of his actions, his words, the outcome of it all. 

 

He had let his naivety get the best of him. True, he was stuck in the past because he could not remember it. True, he wanted to pull the memories out from wherever they tucked themselves. But, they didn’t need Tsukishima Kei. Just the name, just a face.

 

“Now that we’ve settled on the fact that you’re really back, how about we call it a night.”

 

Unexpectedly, Tsukishima heard his own voice ask, “That’s it?”

 

Ukai rose, attracting the eyes of the others in the room. He laughed softly, smoothing out the lines in his robes, resting a gentle hand on the sash that wrapped around his waist. “I wouldn’t want to overwhelm you on your first day, young master Kei. What’s that western saying again?” He smiled as he looked down at Tsukishima and he could only imagine what he saw. “Rome wasn’t built in a day. We’ll take our time with this.”

 

His lips twitched into a smirk, though it wasn’t formed out of pride or motivation. It was molded by pity and pessimistic honesty. Who could build an empire like that in the confines of Tokyo? They were all delusional. And he was pathetic enough to continue with the charade.

 

As soon as Ukai left, slow and bones cracking, the other men trickled out over the next couple of hours. Some approached Tsukishima with star struck eyes. They recounted their stories of their time within the group, their gratitude, their devotion to the Tsukishima family. He took it all in, each word falling like a drop into his mind, rippling out on the surface. Eventually, they gathered together like a pool, forming a vague silhouette of his father, the profile of his brother. He closed his eyes and breathed in the stories that left a lingering smoky warmth, similar to vanilla and musk.

 

He tried to patch the other’s stories together in hopes of peeling away a bit of the darkness that covered his own. Just like everything else in his life, it was a hopeless endeavor. Tsukishima’s bones felt too big and too heavy in his body. His neck and shoulders ached from the tension and his only desire was to sink into the softness of his seat. There were a lot of things he wanted to do at that point—sleep, eat, hear his mother’s voice. There were a lot of things he had to do—go to work later on at night, save Ukai’s number he had scribbled on a small scrap of paper folded once over. Out of the choices, he chose the third and did nothing.

 

As the voices in the room quieted and the only sounds that were left was the muffled thump of music from the club down the corridor and the soft click of shoes against the paneled floors, Tsukishima wondered who was still left. A darkness swept over him behind his closed eyes, a shadow hovering. He felt the sides of the couch near his head sink in. His nose became overwhelmed by a faint odor of beer curling around the stronger notes of sandalwood, oak wood and crisp air. His eyes fluttered open to see Kuroo’s hands sinking into the back of the couch, his body angled above him and the summer eyes blazing as it tried to dive straight into him, flying straight to his soul.

 

“What?” Tsukishima snapped, not enjoying being pinned into a small space like this. 

 

“What the fuck was that comment earlier?”

 

He shifted his gaze to the side with the turn of his head, picking out the details of Kuroo’s arms hands that he noticed where roughened and calloused, his wrist that sported a heavy and polished golden watch, a peek of a long thin scar. He kept his eyes occupied with everything else besides Kuroo’s face.

  

Tsukishima shrugged and scratched his jaw. “Nothing really. Just playing the role.”

 

“I’m not paying you for attitude.”

 

A sneer crossed his lips. His head jerked to look back at Kuroo, ignoring how uncomfortable he felt under the piercing stare. “You make me sound like some sort of hooker.”

 

His lips shifted into a smirk. His eyes travelled down from Tsukishima’s eyes, grazed down his throat. Kuroo let one hand go from the couch and crooked a finger around his shirt collar, exposing more skin to the dim light of the room. The hickeys that scattered across his shoulders and collarbones revealed themselves slowly like stars finally peeking through. “Well, I wouldn’t be so off would I? All your cons, I’ve heard they end with a good fuck and a pretty wad of cash in your pocket.”

 

Tsukishima pulled his shirt away from Kuroo’s curled finger, smoothing out the fabric against his chest. His eyes narrowed to slits as he clicked his tongue. “I don’t get paid for fucking around.”

 

“Course not,” Kuroo replied, his hand returning to its former spot. However, this time it didn’t grip into the couch so firmly as before. “You get paid for screwing people over.” Kuroo leaned back so he stood straight again. The hands disappeared from Tsukishima’s side. The cologne’s scent and Kuroo’s smell weakened in potency now that he wasn’t as close anymore. He began picking up the bottles that stood scattered across the table, shaking them from side to side by the neck to hear if there was any left inside. He settled on a mini bottle of Jack Daniels that was less than half full and downed the rest with one smooth swallow.

 

Tsukishima watched as he languidly moved around his desk, picking up papers, shuffling them around. He wondered if it was the whiskey settling in that made Kuroo’s movements look like a slow pacing dance or the room suddenly becoming more cozy and tolerable now that it was just the two of them—yeah, it definitely was the drink, Tsukishima settled. He sighed as he mustered up the strength to push himself out of the seat.

 

“We done for today?”

 

“Going somewhere?”

 

“Work.”

 

Kuroo’s head bobbed as it nodded, his fingers more occupied with the empty mini liquor pinched at the neck of the bottle between his thumb and index finger and the other hands flipping documents over.

 

“Another date?”

 

His eyes rolled out of habit. It was a useless action if Kuroo couldn’t see, so he responded flatly, “I have a normal job too, you know.”

 

“Wait,” his hands stilled as his head whipped up. A smile eased across his lips from ear to ear, a childish expression if any in comparison to the tension just a few moments before. “You’re a salaryman in the morning and a con man at night like a sort of twisted Superman, Batman shit but leaning on the more villainous side.” Kuroo’s eyes quirked, making his smile look more foolish.

  

“No,” Tsukishima answered, exasperation in his tone. “Please stop making such crazy assumptions and trying to pass it on as fact. You’re neither Sherlock Holmes nor are you psychic.”

 

Kuroo’s shoulders rose and fell in a defeated shrug with his eyes falling, softening his smile. “So? What do you do?”

 

“Bar tend.”

 

“Superman-Batman combo would have been much cooler than a bartender.”

 

“Sorry to disappoint.”

 

Kuroo went back to busying himself with the desk, pulling opening a drawer and shifting things inside. Tsukishima checked the time on his phone and settled that if he left now, he’d be able to catch the next train to barely make it in time for his shift. If Sawamura Daichi valued anything, it was punctuality. While Sawamura had a cheery and kind disposition, Tsukishima would never want to get on his bad side. His thoughts of his boss were disrupted by a loud slap against the table. A stack of bills neatly bundled together landed on the empty space on the other side of Kuroo’s desk.

 

“Here, your money,” he mumbled as he pulled out a pack of smokes that hid themselves deep inside the drawer.

 

Tsukishima eyed the money. Suddenly the sight of the crisp, stick straight bills and the faded gradient washes of color churned his stomach uncomfortably, winding up organs and all like the old fashioned toys with the bolts twisted on their backs. _It must be the alcohol_ , he thought as he stuffed his hands into his jacket pocket and turned to leave.

  

He made his way towards the door, quickly but quietly enough that his hand rested on the knob before Kuroo had noticed Tsukishima not approaching. He twisted the door open before the curtly answered, “Don’t need it.”

 

He gave himself an opportunity to glance at Kuroo stop, trying to catch the words and repeat them in his mind to make sure he heard it correctly. The sharp eyes lifted to Tsukishima. Their glances moved like gears turning. The other’s lifted gaze only made Tsukishima’s head turn, forced not to make eye contact and look straight ahead. The flame from the lighter flickered a couple of inches away from the cigarette that now hung limp between Kuroo’s lips. “Huh?” was all the other could say before the door clicked shut.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

He watched his lips formed the words, carrying syllables with the curl of his tongue, the slow open and close of his teeth. The sound never came, but Kuroo knew what he was saying all the same as the head tilted back, digging deeper and deeper into the comforts of his pillow, fingers clawing at his own throat—scratching it raw and red. It was the culmination of silence, nothingness clustering together that formed a desperate ringing that woke Kuroo up from his sleep. The dream left him with a face and chest sheen with sweat, twisted his blankets around his legs, and goosebumps on his arms despite the warmth of the sun streamlining into his room and splaying out over him through a slight part in his curtains. The sun was blazing high against the clear blue skies. He didn’t need to check the time to know it was well past noon.

 

He rubbed his face, blowing the fatigue against his hands, wiping away the sweat and slumber that stayed on the surface of his skin. Kuroo’s other arm reached out to his bedside table, blindly reaching for his phone that he hoped he had placed there when he came back. It took a while, but the touch of a cold smooth screen reassured him as he clamped his hand around it and brought it to him. Kuroo parted his fingers to check the time and sure enough it was closer to two in the afternoon than noon. A series of different missed calls, texts and email notifications cluttered the lock screen that he diligently pushed away.

 

The last thing and to his dismay the first thing on his screen was his call list. The top number read Tsukki. The curled ends of blond hair, the narrowed and wary gold—or sometimes blue—eyes, the lips that always thinned or parted a crack to click his tongue at Kuroo’s words, each detail of Tsukki surfaced in his drifting haze—more awake than asleep. He remembered other things as well like the stack of cash that was left untouched on his desk, the last words he had said before he left the club.

 

He didn’t need it? Was the kid fucking with him? The hand that covered his face ran up to muse with his hair, fuss and tussle with it as if he was hoping to shake out logic. He pondered over it with a magnifying glass, poured over it with the diligence of an impossible mathematical equation that was so close to being solved, he just needed the missing formula to have it all click together. But, his brain only worked a quarter of it through, and its rate slowed as he continued to bake in the bed with his stomach growing more aggressive with its emptiness.

 

A sigh that disappeared into a grown left Kuroo’s lips as he forced himself out and slipped on a pair of black sweats that hung low on his hips. He scratched his head and stifled a yawn as he opened the door and was welcomed to a less than empty apartment.

 

“—Like I knew that show was entirely fucked up, but I totally didn’t see that coming! Can you even put a body together like that?” The haphazardly spiked silver haired and broad body that stood up on his feet quickly continued to shout at the smaller body whose chin rested on top of knobby knees that were pulled up to his chest and a phone held up in front of him, “I mean that’s a lot of bone cutting and blood stuff, right?”

 

“Jesus Christ, Bo,” Kuroo huffed as he made his way towards the kitchen, rubbing his temples.

 

Bokuto Kouratou’s grin and excitement did not ease out at the other’s exasperation. It remained just as wide and brilliant and irritatingly inappropriate so soon after Kuroo woke up. Instead, he lunged with his arms—long, wide and strong as wings—and wrapped around Kuroo’s neck in a chokehold. “Kuroo, I watched this wicked show the other day—”

 

“Binged watched it until four this morning,” another equally tired voice interrupted in the middle from the kitchen. Kuroo struggled to lift his head, but knew who it was from, and what kind of person he was like, and his stomach was grateful. The aroma of fried fish, stir fried vegetables, soup—if he was lucky—and the fresh cooked pot of rice drifted and engulfed the room. Kuroo would always be in Akaashi Keiji’s debt.

 

Bokuto defended himself, “It was so good! You would do the same thing if you watched it too, Akaashi. It’s shit you just can’t end until it ends. Kenma feels me, right?” Kuroo’s eyes shifted to the still figure on the couch. His head dipped a hair’s length—the Kenma nod that can only be seen if one did not bat an eye.

 

“I prefer Kenma’s binge watching over whatever happens when you do,” Kuroo answers as he twists out of the hold. “At least he’s not so loud. Your loud ass was the last thing I needed this morning. My head’s killing me.”

 

“Oh?” He didn’t even need to turn his head to know that Bokuto’s face was twisted now with imaginative interest, brow raise, deviant smile, and the devil’s work of a childish tease. His hair probably lifted even more with attention. “Drinking last night, did we? That why you’re looking sexy this morning? Got a friend back there we should know about before we spill some embarrassing stories?”

 

“I swear I’m going to kick you out of my apartment.”

 

Bokuto kept his words locked in his mouth to pad and stifle the laugh that wanted to burst. Kuroo settled on the stool at the marble island counter and watched his long old friend work with the same movements of stirring one pan, adding a pinch of salt to another pot, turning off stoves and pulling out a bowl from the cabinet above. It all blended into a nostalgic dance familiar to him in a rundown apartment that couldn’t even be called so and the two of them splitting the rent with whatever millions of part time jobs they could juggle with a two hour rest penciled in for the day.

 

Kuroo folded his arms and buried his head in the space.

 

“You’re not actually hungover, are you?”

 

“No,” Kuroo muffled. Akaashi kept a long pause for the follow up, but he never gave him one. He couldn’t tell him the headache came from his dream, a clawing and scratching dream that stole his sleep from him for the past 17 years.

 

He listened to the soft clinks of bowls and plates, chopsticks and spoons. The smell of the food grew heavier and he knew by its intensity that it had all been placed in front of him by now. He slid up straight again. “Thanks,” he said before picking up his bowl and started to dig in. The food melted in his mouth and he was all the more grateful for the surprise visit or else breakfast would have been toast or some sort of takeout.

 

“Did you go see Ushijima yesterday?”

 

He shook his head, his black hair following suit and falling back into place. He began to pick at the fish as Akaashi turned back and began putting the cooled pots and skillets into the sink. He turned the faucet on and let the water run cold over the stainless steel. “He went to pay a personal visit to Oikawa. You know him, right? The boss of Aobajousai, Oikawa Tooru.”

 

His hand stilled, the chopsticks pressed against his lower lip. The food he swallowed moved even slower down his throat. “For what?”

 

Akaashi shrugged as he turned off the sink. “Paying his respect for a colleague was the excuse from what the boys told me.”

 

“Bokuto might be on his list next,” Kuroo teased as he began eating his food again with much more energy and vigor. His heart pumped. A resounding “yes” flowed through arteries and capillaries, stretched his lungs out with every inhale, and increased his appetite.

 

“If Ushijima comes knocking on Fukurodani’s door…” Akaashi paused and his hands stopped washing the pans. Kuroo could see a tug of a smirk and a laugh escape—soft and breathless, “Well, let’s see how desperate the grand king becomes after Oikawa before he starts seeking out Bokuto.”

 

He went back to placing the washed pots onto the drying rack while Kuroo began to eat again. Kuroo wouldn’t have noticed it himself if Akaashi did not point it out to him. “What’s with that look?”

 

His head lifted, a fishtail sticking out between his teeth. His head tilted suggested a ‘what look’. The slender man crossed his arms and leaned back against the sink, one leg angled over the other. “You’ve got the devil’s smile on your lips.”

 

Kuroo didn’t say a word and instead ducked his head. The warm steam of the rice rose and hit his face. He could feel it, the lifted muscles in his cheeks, his parted lips that held the smile between the fish clamped between his teeth. He was smiling—of course he was smiling. _Ushijima moved. Ushijima moved. Ushijima moved._ The words chased each other in an endless loop in his head.

 

“God, I hate that look,” Akaashi huffed finally. “It means me and Bokuto are going to be dragged into this whether we like it or not. I think Kenma’s the only one of us who hasn’t been hit with the seven years of bad luck that you curse on others.”

 

Kuroo finished chewing the fish with a loud crunch as he propped his chin on the tops of his knuckles. A grin stretched even wider on his face as he eyed Akaashi. “I like to think people love to cross my path.”

 

The other scoffed, running thin fingers through short curled black hair, snow flesh carding through black waves. Kuroo caught an image of Tsukki, threading his own fair fingers through gold locks just as curled at the ends. “We both know the reality of it all that the world would be a much happier place if you weren’t around.”

 

Kuroo kept his smile, expression unfazed. The black cat treasured the demon’s smile. It was all he had left after signing away its soul.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for how long it took to update this. I'm in the middle of an incredible writer's block moment so the next update could take equally as long. I didn't mean for this story to be a slow burn, but apparently that's what's happening now. A more thorough background on Kenma will be coming, likewise for Akaashi and Bokuto. uwu
> 
> Oh, and if anyone is interested, I’m looking for a beta/someone to bounce ideas off of to hopefully help me out with this slump. Message me if you’ll be into it! :)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The same magic bound him now as he worked on the simple tasks, preparing for closing. The steady count of money being counted and the polished squeaks of the towel against the dried glass stirred the bar’s enchantment too. If Tsukishima had to put a name to the feeling, he would tentatively call it peace—a fool’s peace. He worked without thinking, worked nameless and without character, worked mixing cocktails and pouring drafts without needing to put on a particular face, with particular eyes, or a particular inclination to certain sweets. He stood behind the bar and served anonymously.
> 
>  
> 
> He found peace in being no one, not even himself.

A little ways away, in the heart of the city—while also being on the outskirts as well—there was a bar nestled between a family run ramen shop and dvd rental store. There was nothing particularly special about the bar. No one went out of their way to find it. Those who enter were either local regulars or passerbys who happened to be around the area and wanted a drink. The bar served the typical drinks and cocktails. The manager was nice and respectable, but not entirely memorable at first glance. And yet, Tsukishima knew the space had its own certain magic that he had stumbled upon when he first entered the bar. The warmth that spread across the leather of the lounge chairs, the dark wood of the chairs and polish of the counter, the aroma of open drinks filling the room, and the colors that marked their space inside by even the hint of light outside were pieces of the spell that had Tsukishima returning, returning so often that he even decided to work there.

 

The same magic bound him now as he worked on the simple tasks, preparing for closing. The steady count of money being counted and the polished squeaks of the towel against the dried glass stirred the bar’s enchantment too. If Tsukishima had to put a name to the feeling, he would tentatively call it peace—a fool’s peace. He worked without thinking, worked nameless and without character, worked mixing cocktails and pouring drafts without needing to put on a particular face, with particular eyes, or a particular inclination to certain sweets. He stood behind the bar and served anonymously.

 

He found peace in being no one, not even himself.

 

The Crow Bar grew to become an even larger sanctuary the longer he thought about being involved with Kuroo Tetsurou and the rest of his merry men and comrades. Tsukishima rubbed the glass even harder as he remembered Ukai Ikkei the other day. The glass screamed under Tsukishima’s rough handling, screamed loud enough for a sharp thump on the head. The thoughts and his hands stilled instantaneously like a hypnotist snapping his fingers as a cue to wake up.

 

Tsukishima rubbed the top of his head while glancing over at Daichi who held a stack of bills neatly. The man’s brows furrowed, but his smile softened the expression. “What’s wrong Tsukishima? I’ve never seen you space out like that before.”

 

“Nothing,” he muttered as he set the dry glass aside and picked up another. 

 

“You sure about that?” Daichi tapped his shoulder with the bills again. “Here, payday.”

 

“Yes, I’m sure. And, thanks,” Tsukishima answered as he took the money and slipped it into his pocket—the only honest money he was earning now a days.

 

Daichi crouched down, grabbing the leather bound sales ledger. He made his way to the other side of the bar with the book tucked under his arm. He settled on the stool directly across from Tsukishima and opened it up, writing down and tallying tonight’s profits. Tsukishima could hear the quiet rhythm of Daichi’s foot jittering, leg bouncing in his seat. He could hear, in the vacuum of silence, the rough exhale through his nose after every scratch of his pen. He looked over the frame of his glasses to catch the profile of furrowed brows digging deeper every second and the finger that tapped consistently on the marked pages.

 

It was too much of a scene that Tsukishima dared venture into polite manners, “Something wrong?” His hand stopped as he fully looked at his boss now, the tension that ran along his neck, the grit of his strong jaw, the tremble of his middle finger that balanced his pen.

 

The other shook his head quickly and flashed a gentle smile as he looked up. The end of the pen tapped against Daichi’s temple softly as he laughed. “Just a hiccup. But, it’s all right. Nothing we can’t handle over time.”

 

Making a living off lies, Tsukishima recognized Daichi’s poor attempt at the job. The words half-straddled on truth, on foolish optimism. It was that cracking honesty that made images of his mother surface in his mind. While Daichi wrapped himself up with the façade of hope, his mother drank in worry and doubt, pessimism and fear—all of that while trying to maintain a smile whenever she saw him. And him, playing along with her, repeating hollow words meant to comfort her.

 

He did the same with Daichi now—continue along with the script he was handed. “Eh, really? That’s good.”

 

But, it wasn’t good. Not in the way his lips returned to its worried grimace as soon as Tsukishima busied himself again, or how tight his fingers fisted in his short locks of hair. None of that read as a slight hiccup, not a gentle decline of a small hill. However, Tsukishima knew Daichi tried to reassure himself with those words, find fool’s hope in whatever darkness he was being submerged in, tricking himself in believing there was water in the Sahara or putting faith in cubic zirconia for diamonds.

 

If that was what Daichi wanted to believe, who was Tsukishima to destroy that?

 

With a sigh escaping, he finally closed the book. Capping his pen, he turned his head towards the direction of the wall paneled with the stain glass windows. The colors splashed across his face, over strong brows and the sharp eyes, resting in the lift of cheekbones under Daichi’s tan skin. It was the warmth of the colors, the dimness of the room, and Tsukishima’s silence that fostered Daichi’s thoughts to tumble out of him, spill out in the open instead of remaining trapped in his mind.

 

“Have you ever felt disappointed?” he began, “I mean, not in the normal way, but on a grander scale.” 

 

Tsukishima placed the last glass down into the bin and carried it to the other end of the counter before wandering back to hang the towel on the lower racks behind the bar counter. “A grander scale?”

 

“Yeah. Like, you’re fed to dream as a kid. Imagination becomes your air as you grow up. One week you might dream of swimming in a swirl of stars and galaxies, drifting away into space. Next week, your heart is suddenly bursting with a cartoonish idea of justice and you want to wear a police uniform and wield badge and gun.” A short laugh shakes Daichi’s shoulders. “And no one says a thing until you’re in high school maybe and suddenly your imagination is poison. It’s toxic—not practical or hopeless. Suddenly, skills and talent become a factor and imagination isn’t enough.”

 

Tsukishima watched as Daichi’s eyelids falter into closing before they opened again. The man spins to turn away from the windows and face the rest of the large space of the room, the high tables and chairs, the booths and framed pictures scattered. He extended his arms out as if trying to hold onto the room, crumbling inside his head brick by brick. “This was my imagination.” Daichi looked over his shoulder and gave Tsukishima a cheeky grin. “Not one I came up with as a kid, mind you.” He turned back to look over the room again. “But, I believe all the dreams I’ve had before then led to this.”

 

His eyes took in the room, the meld of wood and leather and metal, the glass and the varying liquor bottles. The warm ambiance of the bar was Daichi’s dream, Daichi’s imagination. Then, his watch fell onto the book under Daichi’s arm.

 

The disappointment of a grander scale—reality.

 

Daichi inhaled deeply before swinging around again. The traces of his fears vanishing, parting way for the wide smile that tried to say, _Everything’s okay. We’ll be okay. This is just a road bump, a hiccup. We’ll get by._ His eyes flickered over to the clock hanging on the wall. “You should be heading home now,” he shifted, “The trains might be stopping soon.”

 

“Yeah,” Tsukishima replied as he looked at the slow ticking clock too. “Good work today, boss.”

 

“Good work,” Daichi called back, his voice following Tsukishima as he made his way to the locker room to grab his jacket and bag tucked away in his shelf. He made his exit, leaving the soft clinks of glasses and a drink being poured to the comfortable space that only it could reside in.

 

When he rounded the corner, he saw a lean figure in a tailored dark blue wash suit stand in front of the door, head tilted back to look at the illuminated sign of The Crow Bar, one character that needed a change in bulbs flickered sporadically.

 

“We’re closed for the day,” Tsukishima said when he reached the figure with soft wispy gray hair. 

 

The man turned his head and a delicate smile crossed his features, crinkling his eyes and scrunching up the mole at the edge of his right eye. He pointed at the door with his long finger. “Is Daichi still in there?”

 

He nodded once hesitantly. Should he ask for a name? Should he ask what the man wanted with his boss? But none of the questions left him, because in the lines that hugged the corners of his mouth and the way his face fell into the easy smile, Tsukishima felt the tug of trust.

 

“Thanks,” he said before pulling the door open and walking right in comfortably.

 

Tsukishima stood still for a moment as he listened to the voices rising and falling, the laughter spilling, drinks poured. All the sounds that rushed out before the door closed and kept the soft round eyed stranger and Daichi in the spell that kept the brick and mortar of The Crow Bar together.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

>> talked to old Ukai yet?

 

He gave the text ten minutes untouched before Tsukishima replied.

 

>> no

 

It had only been a day. The man would not have reached out to him so soon anyways. If he wanted to build Rome, he needed more time. Tsukishima took a sip of the hot coffee before settling it back down on the saucer. He glanced at the phone before returning to his laptop, clicking away at spam in his inbox that he had left untouched for months.

 

His phone dinged again with another message as he opened a few emails from usernames he recognized. 

 

>> hope you don’t miss me too much

 

>> hope you aren’t pretending to take your sweet ass time in replying to me because you want to play hard to get ;)

 

Tsukishima gagged when he read the latter, only to realize that Kuroo can’t see the disgust smearing on his face. He quickly turned away from the workers hanging around the small table refilling sugar packets and straws while chatting about whatever controlled their lives. At the moment, it sounded like a boy band coming into town soon. Their chatter dragged into a low buzz to him as he shifted in his seat and quickly answered.

 

>> I’m not. please stop disgusting me

 

His attention drifted back to his emails. They all read the same as if there was a email template for desperate businessmen after being conned:

 

It’s me, [insert name here]. [Insert fake name here], where are you? I can’t reach you on your phone. Look, I know what you did, but please come back. I forgive you. If you want more, I can give it to you. Just, please respond. You were the best thing that has happened to me and I know you feel the same way too. We couldn’t have what we had one-sidedly. Please. I love you, [insert fake name here]. Here’s my number. Get back to me as soon as you can.

 

The other template had less of the soft sentiment and more rage, more swears, but ran along the same line in the end. Tsukishima barely got through the fifth email before Kuroo replied again.

 

>> no need to feel shy tsukki 

 

>> I have enough experience to know what is in your maiden heart

 

Tsukishima clicked his tongue. Kuroo would not hear that either. It took twenty minutes of not replying that stirred another text from the man.

 

>> tsukki??? you there???

 

>> can

 

>> you

 

>> hear

 

>> me

 

>> ??????

 

>> if you’re having sex

 

>> I hope this kills the mood 

 

The text made Tsukishima forget how hot the coffee actually was before he drank it again. Tongue scalded and the pain hissing past his teeth, Tsukishima grabbed his phone and answered, pounding the screen with his fingers with irritation—irritation that Kuroo could neither see nor feel.

 

>> you’re a dick

 

Kuroo was quick to answer. Half a second if his mind counted quick enough.

 

>> sorry

 

>> about what I said the other night. I didn’t mean to say whatever it was that made you upset. job hazard

 

Tsukishima sighed as he leaned back into his seat. He bit his bottom lip as he read the message. It sounded sincere enough if he could put the voice to the words, picture the slight down curve of the edges of his lips, and a hand resting on the side of his head where his bangs fell in front of his eyes.

 

>> are you sure it’s not just faulty character?

 

>> well…who knows :-P

 

His lips involuntarily tugged upwards slightly at the sight of the emoticon. Luckily, Kuroo would not be able to see that. Tsukishima forced his lips back down before he typed out another response.

 

>> so? is that all? 

 

>> well mostly

 

>> mostly?

 

>> also wanted to just talk to you too

 

>> about?

 

>> pizza

 

His brows knitted together. The verve of the cappuccino machine started up, fussing with its gears and steam. “Pizza?” Tsukishima said as he typed it out.

 

>> we can talk more over pizza

 

His fingers stilled over the screen. The chattering voices, the typing keyboards, the gentle thumps of paper cups being dropped all hushed into a whirring silence. His heart beat with suspicion, fluttered with fool’s optimism, and stilled with the grand scale of disappointment that was sure to come.

 

Tsukishima had three options—each resulted with an unsatisfactory conclusion. His gold eyes flickered back up to the laptop screen that he had completely neglected. New messages came flooding in. It was an email he recognized but didn’t give it much worth. More rage mail by the consecutive subject lines. **Fuck you. You’re fucking dead shit.** And many more with the rainbow comprised of curses and swears.

 

>> is this a part of the job?

 

>> think of the food as a payment for peace

 

His hands threaded through his blonde curls. What in the world was he doing? Each stroke of character screamed bad news, regret, trouble brewing in a cast iron pot. But, curiosity egged him on. A series of questions could be answered. Questions about his brother, about his father, about the time before the murders. He wanted to see the darkness that deepened the color of Kuroo’s eyes, pick away at the irritation when Tsukishima grew into the mold of Tsukishima Kei.

 

>> sure. text me where

 

He picked up the coffee again and took a sip. It was now cold. The flavor of the drink had settled into a bland taste without the heat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this took forever and a day to update. I am so so so so very sorry. I have no excuses for such a long delay outside of writer's block getting worst (which I want to cure before nanowrimo ;~~;) and pure procrastination fueled by jdrama. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the silence that followed, they finished the first round of their slices and reached for the next. It was like a page turning, next topic, the next conversation, jumping to the next scene. It was the mood they settled on. The room of the past that Kuroo decided for them to meet up seemed to draw out small truths from them, like strangers slipping out their hidden secrets to unburden their hearts.

Tsukishima could’ve mistaken the space for an insane asylum abandoned and wiped down several years later to be sold on the market. He stood at the door of the studio loft, startled and blinded by the four bare white walls, the scuffed cement floors, and the only furniture being a muted brown suede couch in the middle of it all that he feared was picked up from the streets and planted into the room—infested with bugs and all. This was not the coziness of The Crow Bar, nor the magic of the stained glass. The open view of the city across from where he stood was the only redeeming aspect of the space that carried a hint of bleach if his mind wasn’t conjuring up the smell. Kuroo sat on the floor, legs spread out with the pizza box between them. He faced the windows, watching the office people in their skyscrapers a block or so away rushing back and forth, furiously typing without looking up or looking out to notice him.

 

He took a hesitant step forward. “What is this?” Tsukishima asked as his gaze roamed even though there was nothing in particular to look at. It was the emptiness of it all that captivated Tsukishima, and made him expect more, perhaps invisible at first glance.

 

Kuroo looked over his shoulder with a flashy smile. “Good, you’re here. Sit down,” he said as he pointed to the sofa that made Tsukishima’s skin crawl. “Pizza’s still nice and hot too.”

 

He carefully made his way towards the couch, unwrapping the beige scarf around his neck. He warily eyed the seat again. Maybe he smelled a faint odor coming from the furniture too. Tsukishima made his way on to Kuroo’s other side, away from the potentially bug ridden seat for the slightly dusty cold hard floor.

 

The decision only rewarded him with a toothy grin from Kuroo. “You wanted to be this close to me, Tsukki?” He quirked a brow, suggestive and teasing.

 

“Get real,” Tsukishima answered as he sat cross-legged and reached over to open the cardboard box, still warm as Kuroo said. The logo on the box was not one Tsukishima was not familiar with, but the smell the emanated had his mouth water.

 

“Didn’t know what you eat, so I just got my usual.”

 

Kuroo’s usual was pepperoni, mushrooms, green bell peppers, and extra on the pineapples. Tsukishima hated to admit it, but that was his usual too. He kept his silence, and took a slice. The crunch of the dough, the melt of the cheese and the sweetness of the pineapple mixed with the salt of the pepperoni and balance of the mushroom and bell peppers was sickeningly appetizing and he hated that he was enjoying the meal with Kuroo Tetsurou of all people. His eyes moved to what the other watched earlier, workers scrambling behind the glass of their buildings without a clue. They reminded him of frantic goldfishes in a fish bowl, moving and bumping along the walls.

 

“Good?” Kuroo asked with his own crunch of a bite.

 

The blond gave a shy nod before biting again. He said, “It’s good,” hopefully quiet enough and under his breath enough that the other couldn’t hear. But, he was sitting so close to the other that even the quiet beat of his heart was a shout across the room.

 

“You never answered.”

 

“Answered what?”

 

“This place? What is this place?”

 

“Oh,” he said. His face was changed into a strange expression of surprise with his realization, as if he had forgotten to tell Tsukishima and was caught off guard. Kuroo leaned back onto the palms of one of his hands and tilted his head back, stretching out smooth neck, a sculpted curve of his jaw. His summer eyes roamed the ceiling above. “This is where I started,” he said as he continued to chew. “You’re a newbie to this world so you probably don’t know, but the Tsukishima group used to have a bunch of affiliate and sub groups. Shiratorizawa was one of them. Nekoma was the other.”

 

“Nekoma,” Tsukishima repeated thoughtfully as he took another bite, stretching out the cheese and tried to catch it before it drooped to the floor.

 

“This used to be home base.” A childish wicked smirk eased into his face. “Lots of fucked up shit happened here.”

 

Tsukishima lifted a brow as his head turned towards to Kuroo, taking a bite of pizza with one arm curled around a pulled up leg. It was the wistfulness in his expression, softened with memory—happy it all seemed, a paradox if one took into consideration the daily work and fare of the yakuza business. His interest bristled like curiosity running its nails down his spine—reaching the right spots with the right amount of dig into his skin.

 

“You make it sound like you had some sort of wild orgy going on in here.”

 

The smirk was now directed at Tsukishima. Kuroo took another mouthful, running a tongue at the corner of his mouth to catch tomato sauce. “Would that turn you on?”

 

He scoffed. “No,” he said flatly, “it wouldn’t.” With his free leg, Tsukishima kicked Kuroo’s knee, telling him to knock off the subject.

 

The other laughed, warm and bubbling like tea freshly brewed. The sound faded into a content sigh as he looked at the space again. Tsukishima wondered what ghostly silhouettes of the past that he saw. Whose scuffling footsteps did he hear? What pictures hung along the walls? Was there a rug? What was the color of the desks? Was it as neat as his own at the cabaret? Tsukishima’s eyes fell on the bone-chilling couch next to Kuroo. Was that god awful thing once a part of that time too?

 

“But it was still great even though I joined closer to the end of Nekoma’s time.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

His lips fell into a thin line. There grew an uncomfortable hesitation as Kuroo wavered before he took another bite of his pizza. “The group just dissolved after the end of the Tsukishimas. Most of those in Nekoma left or got absorbed into Shiratorizawa.”

 

“Like you?”

 

Kuroo shifted his eyes down and back to the fish bowl office workers. He sunk his teeth into the crust, letting the crunch echo into his skull. “Yeah, and that roughed up guy you see every time, Yamamoto. Him, too.”

 

In the silence that followed, they finished the first round of their slices and reached for the next. It was like a page turning, next topic, the next conversation, jumping to the next scene. It was the mood they settled on. The room of the past that Kuroo decided for them to meet up seemed to draw out small truths from them, like strangers slipping out their hidden secrets to unburden their hearts.

 

This time, it was Tsukishima’s turn.

 

Well, it wasn’t entirely his decision to go next. It was the vibration of his phone in his pocket that distracted him. As he pulled it out, Tsukishima glanced down at the name and number. His lips twisted in exasperation as he rejected the call and turned off the phone for good measure. But, when he glanced up again, he noticed the peering eyes that belonged to Kuroo on him, on the phone he had turned over in his hands—the second phone, the “work” phone.

 

He didn’t ask anything, but Tsukishima felt the question brimming behind Kuroo’s lips. “It’s nothing,” he said.

 

“Doesn’t seem like nothing if you had to turn off the phone too,” Kuroo said, taking a large bite of his slice.

 

“Well, I could leave it on if you’re not annoyed with a phone vibrating every ten minutes.”

 

“Why don’t you toss that phone out? You’re done with the guy, aren’t you? Robbed him naked and all?”

 

Tsukishima pulled at the stringy cheese, dragging along a half cut pepperoni at its tail. “I can do it later. It’s not like he’ll be able to find me again.” He slipped the piece in his mouth and licked the sauce off his thumb and index finger. It had been a good while since he had eaten pizza. The last time had to have been with Yamaguchi a little before he moved to Tokyo. It was one of their casual parties, snacks and a few barely chilled beers. They watched a movie on the small, boxy television set Yamaguchi got from his grandmother who didn’t need it anymore since she was going blind anyways.

 

Half of the pizza had his toppings, the other half he remembered Yamaguchi added olives and diced up meatballs.

 

“What about your mom,” Yamaguchi had asked as he grabbed a slice from Tsukishima’s side. “Is she staying here?”

 

Tsukishima nodded, mouth full with a slice.

 

The freckled face friend scrunched up his nose at the gestured answer. “Are you sure that’s okay, Tsukki? I mean, I know it’s not cool to be bringing your mom with you, but she might have a break down if you’re gone too long.” There was a beat of a pause. Yamaguchi’s eyes widened as he held the pizza before his mouth. He quickly dropped back down onto his plate and stuttered, “Not that I mean your mom’s unstable or anything. I just—it’s just that you—I mean.” When the words didn’t come to him as quickly or coherently as he needed them too, Tsukishima saw the red creep up to his cheeks and spread from ear to neck. The constellations that scattered over the bridge of his nose grew darker with the flush.

 

“I get it,” Tsukishima said coolly. “I won’t be gone for too long. And I promised to keep in touch through calls.”

 

That was what he had said, and he remembered it now as he sat on the cold cement floor of an abandoned office, eating a slice of pizza with Kuroo beside him. He barely kept in touch with his mother the past few weeks after taking on the job. It was a lure—the call of his father and subsequently the abandonment of his mother. He should call her.

 

 _Later_ , he figured. _I have time._

 

“What do you even do with the money?”

 

“What?” Tsukishima, stirred out of his thoughts, said as he turned to the other man who wiped his fingers with a crumpled up napkin between his long fingers.

 

“The money that you con them out of. What do you do with it?” He began wiping the sauce and grease around his mouth. “You said you had a job as a bartender, right? If you work that then you don’t need to con, and if you’re conning, it doesn’t really make sense that you’re working.”

 

Tsukishima lowered the crust in his hands as he stared at Kuroo for a long while, long enough of a gaze that the other turned his head, confused. “What?”

 

“Sometimes, hearing logic come out of that mouth just surprises me.”

 

“I try to impress,” Kuroo said with a wink. Tsukishima made a show of shivering before he took the last few bites of the pizza crust. He was full and despite the emptiness of the room, it was warm with the sun soaking in through the windows and warming his legs, bathing him in its light as far as it could reach him.

 

Tsukishima could have fallen asleep right then and there if he wanted to. The mood was lulling him into that cliff edge of wake and slumber. He was rocked closer to sleep as he watched the office drones work, typing, filing, pacing like sheeps jumping over clouds. It wasn’t until he saw a woman trip with files in hand and watch the burst of white paper flying and scattering that he was reminded why he was here in the first place, why he decided to take on the invitation.

 

He rested his cheek in the crook of his folded arms and turned his head to look at Kuroo, solid profile and all. He kept his eyes half lidded as he stared. He dropped his voice low and to a whisper, added a touch of slurs if he could. “Do I really look like him?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Tsukishima Akiteru.”

 

Just the name made him flinch. Kuroo shifted slightly, his eyes moved to its periphery to glance at Tsukishima. Even through the slits of his eyes, he could see the wariness fade as Kuroo thought the blond was on the verge of falling asleep. He brought up a hand and ran through the dark locks of hair. It looked like sleek velvet, a black fur coat with its shine.

 

“Sorta, kinda,” he admitted. “But, you’re a bit too bony. And your eyes are not as round, and your voice isn’t as deep.”

 

“Did you love him?”

 

There was a stretch of a breath, a drawn out pause pulled longer and longer by the unearthing of years and memories. At the end of the long stringy pause, was an answer thickly wrapped up with the desire to forget. Kuroo didn’t answer, but that was a response in itself.

 

The end of his lips tugged upwards as he moved his head and body closer to Kuroo, knocking against his white shirt sleeved arm. “You’d be such easy prey,” Tsukishima breathed softly.

 

A smile tugged on his lips as well as he slightly cocked his head. “Really?”

 

“You’re walking, living, breathing guilt. If I had met you first, you’d be so screwed.”

 

A dry laugh left Kuroo’s throat. He knitted his fingers together in his lap. “How would you have done it? How would you have conned me?”

 

“I’d put on those gold contacts, wear those glasses like the one of the little boy in the pictures. I’d figure out which bar you’d go to, and what time you do. I’d drop by there and catch someone’s attention. I’d scream and thrash a little—cause a scene enough to get your attention.” Tsukishima’s eyes began to close slowly as he pictured it too as he spoke. The dim bar, the haze left behind from the smoke. He’d be wearing something relatively plain, his shirt would be a wrinkled mess, hair in disarray. “And you’d stop in your tracks like that time at the train station when we first met. You’d think I was Tsukishima Akiteru before reason settled in. You’d cross the bar quickly, pulled towards a ghost. You’d grab my arms, shake my shoulders and then you’d cup your hands roughly around my face and stare.”

 

“And you’d probably panic. Ask me for my name. ‘Tsukishima Kei,’ I’d tell you. And that guilt would move you. You’d take me in and care for me in place of Akiteru.”

 

Kuroo let out a high and long whistle, impressed. “You’re good.”

 

“So? When will you pack up and I become that sorry loser that’s calling you every ten minutes on your burner?”

 

It was the crisp smell of ice, and musk. It was the low grovel of Kuroo’s tone close to him that pushed him further and further to the edges borderline of sleep. “When I know you’ve fallen in love. When you’ve forgotten about Akiteru. That’s when I’d leave.”

 

“That quick?”

 

“That’s how you fall in love,” Tsukishima replied. “It’ll be just as fast as a knife cutting a throat. Just as—“

 

But his words were taken from him, swallowed by a slow and languid kiss. It tasted like pizza sauce and a slight warmth of Irish scotch.

 

 _Just as fleeting as kissing,_ he was going to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot has been going on for the plot, so I think it was good time to settle down a bit for Kuroo and Tsukki. One of the calms, I guess you could call it.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think…” The blond beside him began slowly, “I think he’s living an ordinary life somewhere out there.” His eyes were steady on the high-rise and telephone wire blocked horizon.
> 
> His lips lifted and his eyes softened as he leaned back on one palm. In the web work of streets and trains, in the waves of people, in the dusty neighborhood streets, the young boy of a faint past scurried on with his normal life. He’d be a recent graduate, new to the workforce. Popular with friends like his brother, maybe have a cute girl on his arms. He’d worry about a present for his mother, if she were still around. He’d be a lightweight probably, but still be persuaded to go drinking with colleagues and group dates. He’d be extraordinarily ordinarily. Life could only offer him that much, Kuroo thought. Life should offer just that. The beauty of the slowly unraveling life of the mundane would be perfect for the young Kei.

Kuroo stood at the doorframe with a swollen, bandaged left-hand tucked into the pocket of his sweatpants. The office played on its tragic end—empty desks with torn papers strewn across the floor, a telephone thrown off the receiver and hung precariously, smashed glass from Nekoma’s name plaque glittering on the cement floor. Looking at the aftermath made him cringe. He swept his eyes onceover the toppled leather desk chairs and coat rack.

 

“What a mess.”

 

The low voice of Ushijima dragged his eyes up the tall man that stood with his back facing him, hands shoved in his pockets as he toed the shards of glass. The setting afternoon sun framed him, broad build and overwhelming, polished and powerful. Kuroo had seen Ushijima in passing a few times for a flitter of a few seconds at best. But, standing in the abandoned and vandalized Nekoma office, standing a few feet away from the man, Kuroo’s breath grew strained, almost labored. He was suffocating on his own fear. Blood rushed to his injured hand and his heart throbbed mercilessly painful.

 

The man began to walk further into the room, glass crunching underneath the polish of his black shoes. Ushijima picked up a paper still on the desk and read it to occupy his time and the silence. “Of course, you should have expected this. It’s an open secret now.”

 

Kuroo’s eyes lowered. The tides of the night crashed into the shores of his mind, beating against him relentlessly like the ocean crashing against a cliff side—eroding it, eating it away. He tucked his bottom lip under his teeth, biting down until he broke skin and tasted drips of blood in his mouth.

 

“What will you do, Kuroo?”

 

“I…” _I…_ even his thoughts trailed.

 

He didn’t know what he was going to do. Scenarios swirled in his mind; his life caught in his throat, resting just where his Adam’s apple bobbed. “I don’t know,” were the only words that managed to escape him though he did want to say two words— _you’re wrong._

 

“You don’t know,” Ushijima repeated the words monotonously, an answer he seemed to have expected from Kuroo. His finger ran along the clean-cut edge close to him. He rubbed thumb and forefinger together to grind the dust and dirt that collected. “Well, you have two options. Option A, you leave. Option B, you stay. It’s that simple. Frankly,” his rounded the corner, stepping on loose papers on the floor leaving a dusty shoeprint behind, “I want you to leave.”

 

His eyes grew wide. His stomach churned and knotted. The heart in his hand throbbed stronger and painfully incessant. It reminded him of the smooth skin it had wrapped around, the jolt of a pulse that was not his underneath it. 

 

Ushijima continued, unfazed by Kuroo’s silence, “I saw it when Nekomata introduced me to you and I saw it the other night too. You’re weak, and I don’t need someone like you.”

 

Kuroo’s eyes flickered up quickly to meet Ushijima who now watched him with the dark pools of his eyes, darkened by the sunlight that casted from behind him. His jaw tensed as the hand twisted into a fist. “Is that why you brought me here?” He kept his voice low and leveled. 

 

“Yes,” Ushijima answered. “This is your ultimatum. Leave the group or be killed.”

 

He grinded his teeth as he clenched down harder. His body trembled with flares and sparks of his anger barely being contained. The images of that night, the strained voice—all of it repeated in him violently. “Why?” he growled, “Why the fuck do I have to leave when…when…” His bottom of his jaw trembled, loosing the grips on his question.

 

Ushijima looked down again as he leafed through an open ledger on the desk. He dissected the remains of Nekoma like a medical student cutting up a cadaver to understand the human body. “A Christian woman who raised me often read stories to me and the other children at night. Appropriately, she read scripture passages even if we didn’t particularly follow the faith. Of all the stories she read, there’s one that reminded me of you.”

 

“And?”

 

“And,” Ushijima calmly said, “I don’t need someone who would kiss his master so easily for 30 pieces of silver.”

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

His fingers brushed through the blond ends lightly before resting on the back of Tsukishima’s head. Fistful, he tugged the young man’s head back gently, releasing him from the kiss. Kuroo caught the flicker of surprise disappearing. A smile edged its way onto his face as he leaned forward, a hair’s breath away again—forehead resting on forehead.

 

“I didn’t do that cause I love ya or anything,” he said.

 

His eyes swept over Tsukishima’s face and despite the collected expression, he caught the small flash of white teeth biting softly on his bottom lip and the dust of red at the curves of his ears, hidden beneath his the longer locks of hair.

 

Kuroo released his grip and shifted away, laughing as he skimmed through Tsukishima’s hair once more before he grabbed his phone. He teasingly held it up to the other’s face. “Can I take a picture of you like this and set it as my wallpaper?”

 

The other instantaneously snapped forward and pushed the phone away. “Fuck off.” The tips of his ears faded into a soft pink, the shadow of the vibrancy before it.  He turned his head in the opposite direction and tucked his head into the folds of his arms again. Kuroo smirked as he looked at the blond crown of hair, just as fine as spider’s thread and just as beautiful as gold.

 

He took the opportunity to grab one of the last slices of pizza.

 

Muffled by his arms, Kuroo heard the question, “So…what were we supposed to be talking about?”

 

“Huh,” Kuroo tilted his head back to stare up at the ceiling—a few small bullet holes left behind, the wounds of the room remained even if Kuroo had cleaned up the entire place. He blinked a few times, shifting away from his distraction to find his way back to the topic. “What was I going to talk to you about?”

 

“Seriously?” the other deadpanned, lifting his head up and turning to face him again. “You forgot?”

 

“Your presence has swept me away—body and mind,” Kuroo teased.

 

“Shut up,” the other answered before lowering his eyes.

 

Kuroo smiled as he closed his eyes and mulled over his thoughts again. What was it he wanted to talk about with the blond outsider? How had they fallen into line so comfortably in this space that had soaked in destruction and blood from floor to ceiling? He let the first thought leave him, another turn of an honest page in a desolate space. “Do you think he’s alive?”

 

“Who?”

 

“Tsukishima Kei.” Kuroo tried to imagine what the young boy, ten years his junior, looked like if he saw him now. Would he recognize Kuroo all tailored and trimmed? He didn’t think he changed much over the years. But, 17 years was a long time. Thousands of people were birthed and died in that span. Faces and lives changed. Memories, even dear memories, could fade.

 

“I think…” The blond beside him began slowly, “I think he’s living an ordinary life somewhere out there.” His eyes were steady on the high-rise and telephone wire blocked horizon.

 

His lips lifted and his eyes softened as he leaned back on one palm. In the web work of streets and trains, in the waves of people, in the dusty neighborhood streets, the young boy of a faint past scurried on with his normal life. He’d be a recent graduate, new to the workforce. Popular with friends like his brother, maybe have a cute girl on his arms. He’d worry about a present for his mother, if she were still around. He’d be a lightweight probably, but still be persuaded to go drinking with colleagues and group dates. He’d be extraordinarily ordinarily. _Life could only offer him that much_ , Kuroo thought. _Life should offer just that_. The beauty of the slowly unraveling life of the mundane would be perfect for the young Kei.

 

Kuroo agreed, “Yeah, yeah he would. I mean, it would only be right.”

 

The idea lingered as long as the comfortable silence that wrapped them up in the warmth of the afternoon sunbeam spreading across the floors, reaching halfway up Kuroo’s spread out legs.

 

“Who were you kissing?”

 

“What?”

 

“When you kissed me...” It might have been his imagination hearing the soft shyness lacing the quiet whisper. It had to be. It was his mind imagining such boyish innocence in Tsukishima’s voice, in the individual that used sensuality and sexuality to make his living. _It had to be. It had to be._ “In your mind, who were you kissing?”

 

“Is that a personal question or is it coming from a business perspective?”

 

He caught the slender fingers dig into the soft cardigan he wore, bunched and scrunched as he gripped. “Nevermind. Forget it.” The other brushed the topic away and any taunt or tease about it after was only met with arctic chilling silence.

 

The vibrations of his phone in his pocket stirred him out of his schemes in working around the cold shoulder that Tsukishima had presented. He wiped his greasy fingers left behind on the pizza on his pants before he reached and pulled it out. The caller ID was from Ukai senior.

 

“Kuroo,” he said.

 

“Are you busy right now?” the old man asked.

 

Kuroo’s eyes averted to he side to chance a glance at the figure beside him before he said, “No, not really. Why? What’s up?”

 

“I’ll need you to pick up young master Kei and bring him to the warehouse. You know the one right?” There was only one warehouse Ukai could be talking about. The warehouse tied with the infamous man on the other line. Of course Kuroo knew. Everyone knew. Everyone also knew that after the death of Tsukishima, it had been untouched, abandoned territory—remnants of an ghost kingdom’s execution ground.

 

He was hesitant and careful as he asked, “Yeah, I know it. But, why?” Kuroo’s voice sounded like it was hollow and far away, like pressing a shell to his ear, mistaking the rush of blood for the roars of the ocean.

 

“Well, there’s no point in finding him if we don’t get his face and name out there.”

 

His brows furrowed, digging deeper lines between them. “Hey old man, what are you planning?”

 

There was a laugh, a nerve wracking displaced grandfatherly laugh that crackled over the line. His spine surged with panic. “Just bring him along. Dress him up nice too.”

 

“Hey, hey, wait--”

 

But the old man hung up on him.

 

He heard it though between the chilling laughter.

 

Chains rattling.

 

A faint clipped off scream—maybe several voices—before the call had cut.

 

He had been quiet for too long, had held the silent phone by his ear for too long, that it prompted the curiosity of the other. The voice, the brief touch to his shoulder startled him, jolting him back into his body.

 

“What? Did a ghost call you now?” the other teased.

 

When Kuroo turned his head, the sarcasm died on the other’s tongue. If fear and worry were contagious, it had leapt from him to Tsukishima just as quickly as he took in the paling face. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

 

Kuroo wanted to throw up the pizza half-digested in his stomach.

 

He didn’t, but he was sure he might when they arrived at the warehouse.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

Tsukishima eyed Kuroo’s white knuckles as he gripped onto the steering wheel and rounded the top of the leather cover of the gearshift. He had whisked him away quickly after the call, mumbled something about meeting Ukai and making his debut. Tsukishima caught Kuroo swearing too in rapid succession tied along with “ _That fucking desperate old man,”_ thrown in the mix. He had looked back at the empty and spacious office that framed the ugly couch and now the empty pizza box left open beside it.

 

The room was empty and yet at the same time, it wasn’t. Pieces of their conversations, their thoughts, their secrets nestled inside the nooks and crannies of the floors, the walls, between cushions.

 

And it shared their kiss—too sweet and too soft for his liking.

 

He shifted and adjusted the three-piece suit he now wore, fitted to him like second skin. Tsukishima felt exposed despite the clothing. It was Kuroo’s agitation that made him equally antsy in the passenger seat. His eyes could barely keep up with the blur of scenery that soaked in the warm orange and magenta cast of the setting sun as they sped down the highway.

 

Slowly with each turn, the view of the high-rise apartments and the buildings fell to empty stretches. With the crack of the sunroof, Tsukishima could smell the salt in the air. His eyes narrowed as he tried to make out where they were. He saw the backdrop of the Rainbow Bridge that stretched over Tokyo Bay. Kuroo turned and his wheels began to crunch as it shifted from smooth pavement to dirt and loose gravel. Tsukishima made out a borderline formed by black SUVs and sleek Mercedes forming a half circle in front of a warehouse chipping in paint and rusting from the outside.

 

Kuroo pulled up and parked on the side where there was room. Even though he had turned off the engine and took out the key, his hand still gripped the wheel tightly. His eyes stared at the fathomless darkness of the warehouses’ entrance—an imitation of dark abyss.

 

Tsukishima followed his gaze, tried to see what he saw. Besides the familiar men he saw last time in Kuroo’s office standing around the front, half-guarding half socializing and mingling with hands tucked in their pockets and smoking, he couldn’t see what had made Kuroo dread leaving the car so much.

 

“Are you actually scared?” Tsukishima taunted, tried to lighten the claustrophobic atmosphere in the car.

 

Instead of a comeback, Kuroo turned his head and looked at him squarely. His fingers slowly released his grip one by one, relaxing them from the rigid fear that pumped through him. “I’m sorry.”

 

The apology left Tsukishima silenced in confusion.

 

“I didn’t expect you to get too deep in this job to have to witness this.” Kuroo shifted in his seat, angling his body to face Tsukishima. Swiftly and quickly, he lowered his head into a bow. His heart pounded now, faster than it did with the kiss. “I’m sorry.”

 

Tsukishima swallowed the lump in his throat before he turned his head again. His neck felt stiff and rigid as it tried to move. His skin crawled, riddled themselves with the same cold goosebumps he had felt in his childish confusion as his mother had swept him away 17 years ago.

 

His fingers felt for the latch of the door as he pulled to open it and stumbled out. The cold air hit him, a slap of blood rushing across his cheeks and over the point of his nose. Fear, it was so seductive. It called to him so easily.

 

A cocktail of emotions now swirled in him. He felt a laugh itching at his throats. He wanted to laugh. What kind of con job was this where the professional would be so easily swayed? What great coincidence was this where he thought he almost believed in fate? Who pulled off this great timing when he was getting so restless of darkness only to lure him into this now? As he slowly made his way over, Tsukishima let the thoughts crash against him in violent tidal waves.

 

When the men at the entrance caught sight of him, they quickly greeted him with a swift bow—not as swift as Kuroo in the car—Kuroo who quietly trailed behind him now, Kuroo who felt more like a ghost than his dead brother.

 

As he walked further, the darkness of the warehouse dissolved into the dim dispersed overhanging lights spread throughout. His eyes fell on rusty steel ladders that led up to a room with windows looking out into the space. It looked like what used to be a supervisor’s room in a factory. The warehouse itself was littered with cardboard boxes, pieces of old car frames cut up and sectioned, steel gears and engines. The floor had oil stains left behind, a dark marks and patches. His eyes wandered, took in his surroundings before it fell on the half circle of suits and the gleam of rich olive green robes that dressed the curved back of an old man whose silver locks mimicked the moon’s shine.

 

“Young master,” one of the men caught sight of Tsukishima. His lips widened into a genuine smile before he bowed as his greeting. They were all like birds, quickly turning their heads to take notice too of the first’s caw and followed suit.

 

Ukai turned and gave him a toothy grin as remained in his seat. He motioned with his twisted hand for Tsukishima to come closer. Pulled in, he listened and took his steps forward. The light shifted with the strong winds from the bay that the dim lighting swayed, casting and shifting shadows. Despite that, the glint in the man’s eyes never disappeared even if one of them was useless now and the other so dark and glassy it couldn’t have been real. When Tsukishima was close enough, the old skin took hold of Tsukishima’s hand and pulled him forward. It felt like rough rubber, scratched and calloused too. As he stumbled forward, he caught sight of kneeling legs and chunks of dried vomit just a few feet away from it.

 

His golden eyes climbed up the dirtied khakis, up to a tattered pale blue-buttoned shirt. He watched the chest rise and fall with a following wheeze. Tsukishima quickly looked back to Kuroo who kept his eyes on him, never wavering. His eyes told him nothing, nothing except the traces of an apology in his car. Whatever he was witnessing or was going to witness was not supposed to be apart of their plan.

 

“Go take a look,” Ukai urged. His comment pulled Tsukishima’s gaze back to him, the revitalized grin of his youth—the infamy of his name. Ukai Ikkei who was well known and well feared. Tsukishima’s eyes swept over the kneeling and wheezing figure, held up by the concrete pillar he was chained to. Nothing seemed completely frightening about the scene. But Tsukishima could feel it, feel the dangerous joy that lifted the old man’s face. It was not the tactics or torture methods that Ukai used that made people fear him. It was more of the fact that Ukai Ikkei seemed more alive when others were closer to death, as if he drank from the other’s youth and maintained immortality that way, perhaps tucked in the cloudiness of the blind eye.

 

Tsukishima felt a tug. Ukai nodded to him to move closer to the chained up figure. He released the hand and did as he was told. His eyes took in the ruffled and sweat drenched dark brown hair. He followed the swirl of his crown. The closer he got, the acidic stench of the vomit mixed with the foul odor of urine grew stronger. Even if he held his breath, it was too late.

 

When he reached the man, Tsukishima slowly crouched and carefully threading his fingers through the soaked hair, pushed it back. What came to light first made him almost fall back onto his tailbone in dizziness. Under the dim lighting, his throat constricted at the sight of freckles dashed across the face, the kisses of stars, the love of the universe left behind.

 

His vision began to creep with black edges.

 

Voice barely above a whisper, the name almost fell, “Y-Yama—”

 

“We managed to get a hold of the head of Tokonami group,” Ukai said. “Ikejiri Hayato. He’s going to be a good business partner, young master Kei.”

 

He could not unsee it, could not stop the faces from overlaying ontop of one another. He looked at the face and could only see Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi who was back home working on a new commercial project that he was excited to be released soon. Tsukishima could not see past the scattered dots.

 

“He’s going to give us Tokonami’s territory as tribute to the Tsukishima group.”

 

Tsukishima blinked a few times, tried to get rid of the creeping edges in his sight. Slowly, it did fade when the rush did too. Now, he saw the lightness of the dark brown hair, the angular thin and sharpness of a porcelain face. This was not Yamaguchi. It wasn’t.

 

However, it could be.

 

Soon enough, it could be.

 

His head slowly turned and grazed up the figure standing further back from the rest. Soft summer eyes shadowed by dark hair falling in his face. Eyes that had apologized for something Tsukishima would be witness to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I getcha? Did you think it was Yamaguchi for a moment??? ( ͡° ͜ ʖ ͡°) 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
> P.S. I'm also working on a mixtape for the series. It'll be purely classical/orchestral/instrumental music. So, there's that to look forward to too if you're into that type of music. uwu 
> 
> 'kay love ya lots!
> 
> P.P.S. I made the unfortunate mistake of giving such a wide age gap between Kuroo and Tsukki. Please forgive me on that oversight. I could have made Kuroo closer in age to Tsukki, but for the sake of future background unfoiling, Kuroo needed to be closer to Akiteru's age and likewise, Akiteru needed to be around a certain age in order to fulfill certain responsibilities. I know that sounds confusing. But, hopefully, it'll make sense in the future! I promise!
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsukishima tried to envision the droplets of spaces in the vast territory. He also recalled an old withered hand circling on a map. Names and names and names of other yakuza groups filling a wide area, clusters bound to bump and spark friction between one another if they wanted to expand. And then the larger circles that fed the beast of Shiratorizawa, the indomitable powerhouse of them all.
> 
>  
> 
> And if he was his father’s son, he would see the land that once was his—spacious and stretching and stolen in the middle of the night with blood that spilled from his father’s head and breath stolen from his brother’s lungs.
> 
>  
> 
> And him, tucked under his mother’s arms, whisked away in the middle of the night, shivering and sweating in front of a new home. What was the name for a boy like that? Coward.

Sweat trickled down the throat exposed to the low light of the warehouse. Ikejiri Hayato’s left eye swelled shut into a deepening purple orb. Blood trickled down his forehead and temples, crusting dry along the hairline. Tsukishima warily got up from his crouch and took a slow step back.

 

He didn’t trust his voice at the moment, but the silence felt too heavy for him, a silence except for the chained man’s labored, shaky inhale. “I…I don’t understand,” he admitted. Tsukishima turned to look at Ukai whose focus rested on the victim.

 

“This is the first step,” Ukai said slowly as if he was teaching young Tsukishima how to speak. This was how the words rolled off one’s tongue, this is the sound it makes, this is the meaning it forms when one strung the syllables together. This is foundation of both truths and lies. “Right now, we are nothing but old and dusty names.”

 

The rubber hands reached out to him, brushing against the cuffs of his suit. His eyes looked up again, glassy and opaque. “We need to be more than names. And, this is how we start. Alliances, networking.” It all sounded very strategic in a business type of way as if they were not yakuza but businessmen trying to build up a company from bankruptcy.

 

But nothing of Ukai’s logic made sense to Tsukishima. He could easily repeat his earlier words again and again and no matter how lengthy the explanation grew, how simplified it became. Tsukishima would not understand how bonds began so cruel and disgusting in this world, just to plant an abstract idea into fertile earth.

 

Ikejiri let out a choking, gasping cough. His shaking body rattled the chains that bound him. His head slowly lifted to look up at Tsukishima. His only good eye squinted as if the particularly dim light overhanging above Tsukishima was as bright and brilliant as the sun at noon. “Who…” his raspy voice grated the air with the unfinished question. _Who are you?_

 

His skin prickled with the load of the simple question. Uncomfortable looking down on the man, Tsukishima crouched back down, now used to the mixture of foul odors that left the man.

 

Eyes leveled, Tsukishima said, “Nice to meet you, Ikejiri Hayato.”

 

_Who are you?_

 

“I am grateful for the opportunity to speak with you now.”

 

_Who are you?_

“I’m the leader of the Tsukishima group.”

 

_Who are you?_

 

“I am the second son of the late Tsukishima Yoshimi, the former head.”

 

_Who are you?_

 

What did a newfound heir look like? What did the head of the group look like to the survivors of the clan? Soft blond hair, the family crown. Golden colored eyes melted by the intensity of the sun. Skin fair enough that it was washed and bathed by moonlight.  A smile that lifted their lips, evoking the same feeling of an old god who was both merciful and merciless.

 

“That’s our young master, Tsukishima Kei, you bastard!” One man interjected out of pride, like apes thumping their fists against their hardened chest to assert dominance and power.

 

Tsukishima couldn’t help, but let the question marinate in doubt. _Is that who I am?_ He could hear the disjointedness in the answer paired with the question. It sounded like an instrument that needed to be tuned, a piano key sounding flat in its noise.

 

He swallowed the thoughts before returning his gaze back to the bruised eyes that stared at him. His voice trembled, “N-Nice to meet you. I-I-I am Ikejiri Hayato, head of the Tokonami group.”

 

Ikejiri tried to smile with the split lip. The corners of his eyes cringed with the pain as it stretched, but he endured. The expression looked pitiful and hopeless, weak and not at all what Tsukishima pictured a yakuza boss to look like. But, who was he to judge when he was supposed to be one himself—a lanky boy, all arms and legs. Everyone paled in comparison to Ushijima—strong shoulders, heavy jaw, and more comfortable in three-piece suits than anyone else could look. Or, Ukai Ikkei who sat behind him with lines dug deep in his face—scars and battle wounds—and a smile that had found a comfortable sinister balance between friendly and frightening.

 

And if the man before him had any seed of resistance, it had been plucked out of him, salted and smothered from its growth in the ground long before Tsukishima stepped foot into the broken down warehouse.

 

“Ukai told me that you were going to give Tokonami territory to us.”

 

The man nodded, feebly. “There’s a few buildings in Roppongi, and a bar in nichome. And there’s a credit union a few blocks away from the station here.”

 

Tsukishima tried to envision the droplets of spaces in the vast territory. He also recalled an old withered hand circling on a map. Names and names and names of other yakuza groups filling a wide area, clusters bound to bump and spark friction between one another if they wanted to expand. And then the larger circles that fed the beast of Shiratorizawa, the indomitable powerhouse of them all.

 

And if he was his father’s son, he would see the land that once was his—spacious and stretching and stolen in the middle of the night with blood that spilled from his father’s head and breath stolen from his brother’s lungs.

 

And him, tucked under his mother’s arms, whisked away in the middle of the night, shivering and sweating in front of a new home. What was the name for a boy like that? Coward.

 

Ikejiri broke his thoughts again with the change in his tone, desperation clinking the chains as he leaned forward. The odor extended with his shift. He was closer and now, Tsukishima could smell the metallic rust of the blood and his sour sweat. “Please,” he said, “I’ll give them all to you. Just don’t harm my group.”

 

It was a desperate plea.

 

 _Please_ , how the word in its cry sounded familiar. A screech that had left his mother’s lips. 

 

It had passed from his own as well in front of Ukai, the man who said he had her mouth. But, he didn’t pant and howl as they did. He did not clutch a body to him and begged for help. Not like Ikejiri, not like his mother. The prayer these two shared meant nothing to him.

 

A dry scoff echoed from behind him. Ukai’s joints popped as he stood and the wooden clanks of his sandals shook the warehouse, the abandoned space that hated his presence, but found comfort in any company, even one as dangerous as Ukai.

 

The click of his cane bounced with his words. “Don’t you think you’re stepping out of bounds of your new position?” Tsukishima watched from the corner of his lowered eyes the feet that approached, the polish of the wooden stick. He lifted them when the hem of the kimono was in sight. He looked to Ukai’s face who had a raised bushy brow.

 

Ikejiri’s eyes snapped upward to the old man. His jaw shook, his chest rose and fell to catch up with his fear now thick in his veins.

 

“I…I didn’t…”

 

He looked back at Tsukishima, pleadingly. The blond could read it in his wild eyes, in the fish gaping mouth, in the beading sweat that slipped down his face. _You understand me._ It screamed. _You know what I was asking for_. It was all as if he took in the innocence of a young face, saw the inexperience at the edges of Tsukishima’s eyes—a humanity that was still very much there.

 

“That’s—I wou-wouldn’t.” His words sputtered like an old car with an old engine trying to go faster than the model could.

 

Tsukishima, rapt up in the shaken face, did not notice Ukai lean down to grab his arm and flip over his hand, palm up. He didn’t notice the touches or Ukai’s voice until he felt something cold touch his skin. His head turned to understand what was handed to him.

 

In the middle of his pink palm, in the middle of the line works of his past and future was a slender knife, wiped down leaving hints of the smear of blood before it. His heart rattled in his cage, banging against bone.

 

“What…”

 

Before Tsukishima could finish, Ukai nodded over to Ikejiri. “If we want Tsukishima to be known again, we need to make a statement.”

 

“We need people to understand their place in this war.”

 

“Yeah, because mutilating a partner totally builds strong bonds.” The fear had let his sarcasm move his tongue.

 

Ukai clicked his tongue as he shook his head as if more and more of Tsukishima’s logic was no more than that of a child. The old hand folded his hand over the end of the handle of the knife. “We are not doing anything different than what lords during the Warring States period did.”

 

Tsukishima let out a short dry laugh. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention during my history class.”

 

Ukai laughed too, his mouth cracked wide as he did. His hand with the cane fell over his stomach to try to reel in his amusement. He was the only one that found Tsukishima’s answer amusing though one or two men tried to chime in once however weak it was. When he brushed the tears away from the corner of his crinkled eyes with his finger, Ukai’s lips fell back into the smile.

 

“A samurai cannot serve two masters. A battle is never over until the lord is dead.” Ukai pointed casually over at the shaken Ikejiri. “He’s still alive, young master Kei.”

 

He almost fell back. He almost dropped the knife out of his hands as if it was disease ridden. He almost did all of this if it wasn’t for the rubber, calloused hand that held onto his, kept his fingers folded over the sleek blade.

 

Tsukishima wanted to throw up. Underneath Ukai’s grip, he was a child again. Instinctively, he turned his head to the semi-circle and in the shadow, standing towards the back, catch the eyes of the man who hired him from the start. Why wasn’t he stopping this? Why wasn’t he saying anything? Tsukishima could see the lines that formed besides his eyes, the thin line of his lips as he watched.

 

 _What is wrong with you?!_ He wanted to scream.

 

But, Kuroo would stay silent and neutral as he always had been when it came to the Tsukishima group, he realized, or anyone with any particular hold. He recalled the way his tongue was sliced with their meeting with Ushijima, his utter silence towards Ukai in his office.

 

Tsukishima felt the desperation shed off of him. His body slacked and his eyes fell back on the protruding knife in his grasp. “This is what your father has done. This is what your brother has done.” There was the grandfather in Ukai speaking, the kind smile and kind eyes, and the warmness of wisdom and old memories. “If you are a Tsukishima son, you will do this too.”

 

The blond blinked slowly, once, twice. He turned to meet Ikejiri’s restless gaze, shifting from the knife, to Tsukishima, to the knife, to Tsukishima again.

 

 _Who are you?_ Ikejiri asked.

 

 _Are you your father’s son?_ Ukai asked.

 

“What about the property?” he heard himself say.

 

“Signed and handed over,” the grandfather reassured.

 

The questions beat against him, break as it crashed against the sides of his mind. Only one answer surfaced. It must have crossed his face, a glint in his eye or a clench of his jaw or a twitch in his finger. Something happened to Tsukishima reflexively that Ukai slowly released his grip and propped himself straight postured again.

 

His hand gripped tighter on the handle until his knuckle turned white, as white as Kuroo’s grasp of the steering wheel just moments before. A silent laugh shook him. Tsukishima honestly thought he’d be observing too, a third party witnessing an event. But, it was Kuroo who would be witness to Tsukishima’s initiation into the group.

 

The responsibility of it all was too much, too much that it turned his mind into a blank and empty canvas. It’d be much too troublesome to leave them now, however. They’d hunt him down. He’d never find peace. He might as well get it over with. Those were his last thoughts as he drove the knife clean across Ikejiri’s throat, letting blood spray and pool over the blade, his hands, the new three-piece suit that felt constricting and uncomfortable on him.

 

Ikejiri’s gasp dissolved into a desperate choking gurgle.

 

He wondered, wondered what he was saying if he was saying anything. Was he saying _please, answer, help_ like his mother had?

 

He watched this all as the old man patted his back rhythmically with pride. Each sturdy thump grew to become Morse code. _You are indeed your father’s son._

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

 

When his job was done, Tsukishima excused himself with a wet towel given by someone as he briskly walked out. The space of the warehouse, no matter how large, felt like it was closing in. The smell that left the body became grew foul and sour. He needed to get out, get air.

 

He shouldered past Kuroo as he made his way out and rounded over to where the water lapped. The cold burned his face. Tsukishima sniffled up the mucus that wanted to drip out. He furiously rubbed his hands with the rag, leaving a stain behind on his smooth pale skin and when he felt the sting of raw burn of exposed skin, he stopped. Tsukishima’s eyes took in the red left on the ends of his white sleeves, blood spray from the cut and the darkness under his nails of where the blood now dried.

 

His breath grew labored and he felt dizziness seize him. 

 

They came to the forefront of his mind like flash bombs. His brother curled in a fetal position in his bed, holding himself together, shaking. Tsukishima remembered watching him through the slit of the opened paper screen door. How old was he as he stood there? Four? Five? Probably hurried from his room to greet the eldest after being gone for the day. He silently watched his brother tremble, and watched the smear left behind on his white dress shirt after he threw off his blazer and vest, now a heap on the floor at the end of the bed. His eyes burned the sight into him. The crimson smears dragged out by his hands.

 

It had reminded him of his mother’s lipstick smeared accidentally when he brushed his hands too roughly across her mouth when she held him in her arms.

 

 _This was just as red_ , the little Tsukishima had thought.

 

_Just as red, but never as frightening._

 

Tsukishima blinked once, twice. Tokyo Bay and Rainbow Bridge came back to his sight. Hands held curled out in front of him, he shook just like his brother. His saliva felt hot in his mouth, a cry wanted to untangle itself from the lock in his throat. If this was the first memory to surface from the black cover of his childhood memories, Tsukishima feared what else would come to him, and if it’d be just as red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably didn't see this update happening so fast. Even though it's short, I wanted to write something quick for you guys and also let you know that there's a 70% chance I won't be updating during the month of November since I'm going to try to do Nanowrimo this year. But, if there's a lull in that or if I'm feeling incredibly creative, I might type up something though the chances are very slim that it'll turn into a completed chapter.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
>  
> 
> Anyways, see y'all in a month or so! But, if you want to chat, I'm /always/ on tumblr so you can find me there. uwu
> 
>  
> 
> P.S. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
> 
> P.P.S. If you're participating in nanowrimo too, good luck!
> 
> P.P.P.S. I'm sure all my characters (esp. Kuroo, Tsukki and Ukai) are all sorts of ooc. I'll be punished in the afterlife for it. I'm sorry.
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Should I ask?”
> 
> “No,” Tsukishima said. “I just need you to be there.”
> 
> “Sure.” Kuroo’s smile softened, encased his mouth with sympathy and sincerity and a bit of guilt. “You can trust me to be there for you.”
> 
> He thought the blond would find it reassuring. 
> 
> But, Kuroo wouldn’t put it past the other’s instinct if his body said to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for the last scene starting with "Each step": Sexual Assault, Domestic Abuse/Violence (I don't describe the actions but there's a description of the aftermath. Even though there was still consent to this particular scene, I'm still just noting the triggers for those who need it)

Kuroo closed his eyes to the scene, watch his vision grow slim and narrow like a curtain dropping down on one act of a play. The darkness slunk over the slack head, the red smearing slit across the throat illuminated by the dim light overhead, the dirtied tattered clothes that soaked up the blood, down and down torso and slackened thighs and knees—the only thing holding the body up was the chains that now hung looser as it held a man who had lost his capacity to struggle. He closed his eyes as he always did, and turn his head away to the open entrance of the warehouse. The headlights of the cars offered some light, its farthest reaching the tips of his dusty black shoes.

 

Behind him, he listened to the click of the lock being opened, the clatter of chains falling to the cement floor, the rustle of a plastic tarp being carried over and unraveled on the floor. The noise followed by the distinct odor of bleach. Kuroo trained his eyes on the ground. He listened to the laughter behind him, the sound of camera shutter releasing on smartphones. It had been too long since he remembered the nature of the Tsukishima group—the followers of the moon that illuminated what should be kept in darkness.

 

As he stuffed his hands in his pockets, he saw the shift in the light the cars casted. His eyes looked up from behind his bangs and he saw the lean figure enter the warehouse again. The closer the blond got, the better Kuroo noticed the details of the broken composure—the break of sweat across the furrowed lines of his forehead, the pale pallor with splotchy red patches from the dust of the stronger gusts being near the bay, the skewed glasses that slid a little lower on the high nose bridge.

 

The boy walked past Kuroo, blind to his figure and drawn in the macabre picture before him. The sharp scratch of metal bristle against the cement ran a cold shiver down Kuroo’s spine. He followed Tsukishima walk back to the group and with each step, the artist molded a figure—a stronger back, a sharper jaw, a head held high yet cocky angled slightly out of superiority, composure and command and a casual hand slipped in the pocket of his pants. The silhouette looked vaguely familiar the longer Kuroo looked at it, framed by the poor low light the large warehouse offered.

 

He rapped his mind for it, flicked through the catalogue of friends, foes and passing strangers. As his thoughts skimmed with quick fingers, Tsukishima stepped closer to the tarp, but did not step on it—standing delicately near the edge. He said something softly and one of the men gave him a quizzical look, his eyes darting to his brothers at the other edges.

 

“Just fucking look for it,” Kuroo heard the voice snap sharply, and too loudly than he had ever heard the blond speak. The untucked hand curled and uncurled into a fist at his side to stop the slight trembling of his frame that wanted to burst after his shout.

 

Kuroo’s gaze flickered down to the hands that patted the corpse’s chest, pockets front and back before finding whatever was supposed to be found and handing it to Tsukishima. He took it wordlessly and took a step back from the tarp and motioned them to wrap it up like this was a temporary pause in a factory line. Kuroo tried to catch a clue at what was handed to him, but the other tucked it in the inside pocket of his suit before being called over by Ukai.

 

He watched the old man talk and share a sympathetic half smile as he gripped Tsukishima’s shoulder, an expression of affection that now looked unconvincing amongst the aftermath and ruin under his suggestions and decisions. Tsukishima kept his gaze lowered, occasionally averting his gaze elsewhere, anywhere except at the half-blind man. The conversation stopped with the blond nodding slowly. Ukai gave a pleased nod in return before Tsukishima slipped out from under the old crow’s talons and walk back to Kuroo.

 

The blond stopped when he was an arm length away from him. It was the first time since the kill that the other truly looked at him. The beads of sweat were long gone. The gold melted eyes pierced skin and bone, sharp and hardened at the edges. But the façade was broken with the bottom lip tucked under a hint of white teeth, and the forced tension to the corner of his eyes.

 

Kuroo had sat upon another apology, but his sorrys would get him nowhere, not after it was already said and done. He debated on asking the blond if he was okay, but the answer was clearly written for Kuroo’s eyes. When he could not find the words to compensate the air between them, the other took the lead. “We’re going to the properties owned by the Tokonami group.”

 

After the lord’s death, according to Ukai’s logic, came the raids.

 

“Okay.”

 

“Afterwards,” the other paused before lowering his voice to a whisper, “Can I ask you to do a few things for me?” The long lean neck tensed as he swallowed, a flicker of nerves softened his eyes. Tsukishima peeled back the character for Kuroo, and he couldn’t help but say yes to the request.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

If he was disgusted, the boy didn’t let it cross his features as he sat on the abandoned office chair and allowed the men to wave their phones in the faces of Tokonami members, flashing a clear photo of a body laid out with the smartphone’s clarity of the open wound at the throat reveal the dark crust of blood and torn vocal cord. Kuroo watched them crumble into tears, into anger, into bewilderment and fear. Helpless, hopeless, he listened to them all curse and their eyes quickly flicker to Tsukishima whose face remained set in the mixture of boredom and apathy. The hours passed, the offices changed, the faces of Ikejiri’s men shifted as they moved from point to point, but everything repeated in a cycle. Tsukishima sitting poised in the office seats at the head of the group’s ruins. Head held high, he let them burn the vision of his dark suit, his pale neck, slender nose, narrowed eyes behind black rectangular frames against the backdrop of the city from the open view windows.

 

Amongst the scattered paper, the gold plaque of the group’s name hanging precariously off the wall by one hook, the scene sank into him like a rock thrown into a lake. He understood where the poised back came from earlier in the warehouse, whose eyes stared down confidently now. It was a glimmer of the figure, an amateur’s interpretation of the man—Tsukishima channeled Ushijima. Kuroo’s stomach knotted sickeningly tight that he slipped out of the last office for the fresh, cold air.

 

His breath left him in short huffs, white wisps as it left his mouth and mingled in the air. He headed to his car, gripping the steel with his outstretched arms and lowered his head in the space. His chest constricted tight in his chest. Glittering glass, a strong back, a room warmed by a nearby heater, but also chilly from the opened paper screen door behind him. The sounds of legs kicking up a fuss, a grunt and a groan from the heel kicking into his ribcage.

 

 _Why are you doing this?_ Kuroo was sure he had asked. _This is what you wanted me to do._

 

But the fingers dug into his skin. The tears formed at the corner of eyes squeezed shut before sliding down smooth pale temples. The body fought beneath him as if it did not hear his question, tried to survive out of instinct rather than listen to what the mind had wanted. The scene would have continued to play out like his nightmares, the one that broke him out in cold sweat and had him doubling over for breath.

 

The wind howled, carrying with it the sweet smell of vanilla and the warmth of musk. _His_ cologne. The scent was stronger than before when he just laid in bed and dreamt or closed his eyes and let the images unravel behind the mesh darkness of his eyelids. He snapped his eyes open at the voice that rang like cymbals clashing next to his ear, quiet in reality.

 

“Kuroo,” Tsukishima called.

 

His shoulders tensed before he whipped around, flashing a grin. “Done already?”

 

The boy nodded hesitantly, eyes roaming over the crack on Kuroo’s features, the distortion of the before and after that he witnessed in the dark haired man. “About that favor, there’s a place I want you to take me.”

 

“Chauffeuring you around isn’t exactly something you need to ask a favor for.” He laughed forcefully and gave a light punch to the lanky arm.  

 

“No, it’s not that. It’s when we get there. I mean,” the gold eyes—dark by the shadow of his frames and covered by the long wisp of lashes—darted. Kuroo watched as an arm nervously ran up and down his forearm to warm himself up or soothe his nervousness. “It won’t be much but just…you just need to be there.”

 

“Should I ask?”

 

“No,” Tsukishima said. “I just need you to be there.”

 

“Sure.” Kuroo’s smile softened, encased his mouth with sympathy and sincerity and a bit of guilt. “You can trust me to be there for you.”

 

He thought the blond would find it reassuring.

 

But, Kuroo wouldn’t put it past the other’s instinct if his body said to run.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

The sight of the heights of the hotel building and the chill of the night kept him breathless. His head tilted back to take in the towering view, the steel that tried to pierce the darker canvas millions of miles ahead, but indiscernible to his eye looking up. Tsukishima had already started making his way inside the hotel as Kuroo stared in the same awe that he’d always have admiring the architecture of the city.

 

Tsukishima was already by the door, greeted by the doorman with a tip of his hat with a white-gloved finger by the time Kuroo found him. He jogged up to catch up and slipped through the opened door.

 

Just as the view of the outside, the inside of the hotel lobby was sleek, clean, and polished. The tiles and smoothed steel frames glittered under the warm lighting of the path of chandeliers above. The lobby itself had a few guests walking around, and some businessmen scrolling through their phones.

 

Kuroo stood close to Tsukishima, hands tucked in his pockets. His eyes roamed over the space, took in what wealth could build, what money earned by the small percentage of the nation looked like seamed in suits and dresses, how chemically white their teeth were, what legal business looked like and if they were so different from his world as others claimed it to be.

 

“What exactly are we doing here?” he finally asked.

 

“I’m meeting someone here.”

 

His gaze shifted to his side where the other stood. The profile he had grown to memorize looked blanch, ghastly sick as if he was anticipating underneath his skin. Kuroo leaned in closer to whisper, “You’re not going to do something stupid because of what happened earlier are you?”

 

Tsukishima did not answer him, did not turn his head to even give him an answer, which was a shout enough. Kuroo grabbed the other’s elbow and jerked him to face him. “Look, don’t do whatever it is you’re thinking of doing. It’s not going to solve anything.”

 

The fear that had lined the smooth young face was long gone. The head lifted letting the lobby lights catch onto the golden warmth of tired eyes. Each second, the body that held the fitted suit began to sag with a burden that Kuroo had closed his eyes to for the sake of his own troubles and crimes balanced on his shoulders.

 

“Stupid would be me walking into a police station and turning myself in.” His lips twitched into a pathetic smile. A rough and flaky hand fell on top of Kuroo’s. His eyes flickered down to see the raw and reddened skin, peeling off the long slender fingers and the once smooth hand. His eyes edged to the exposed white cuffs of the shirt underneath his suit jacket—the splatter of blood staining the ends.

 

Before Kuroo could ask, a deep voice called an unfamiliar name, a name Tsukishima recognized because the brunette felt the flinch of his fingers grip tighter over his hand before it released and pulled Kuroo’s grip off. The blond slid on an unfamiliar smile, walked with an unfamiliar gait and confidence and held his shoulders differently that from behind, he might have thought twice if he knew Tsukishima if he was just passing. He wore the name Misaki from what the other man called him. The stranger, as Kuroo managed to peel his eyes away from Tsukishima, was relatively younger than the last man he had scene from the window at the café. His hair ran a deep copper under the lights, and his eyes were lined with anger and suspicion that flickered over to Kuroo every few minutes as they talked.

 

“Misaki, who is this?” the man pointed, clean fingers with a gold Rolex wrapped around his wrist snuggly, gleaming with the same pride and wafting the same arrogance as its master.

 

Tsukishima stepped away from Kuroo, balancing on the ball of his foot as he angled himself towards the elevators. “He’s no one,” he said breezily with a wave. “I got your email. You wanted to talk, we can talk in the room.”

 

The man fitted in a gray suit and sleek blue tie clicked his tongue before he turned away from Kuroo. His shoes stomped against the tile loudly, heavily, an animal declaring its presence like a king. No one turned. They were all kings and queens in their mind. Tsukishima began to follow the other, leaving Kuroo behind still confused, still in a daze of rough hands that had fallen on top of his. He watched the boy stand beside the man whose jaw he could see tense as they waited for the elevator.

 

When the bell dinged and the doors slid open smoothly, Kuroo felt frantic strum his throat dry. His tongue a slap of stone in his mouth. He shouted across the lobby before Tsukishima stepped inside behind the man.

 

“Is this business or personal?”

 

The boy smiled, weak and wavering with the burden of Atlas holding up the weight of the sky, “It’s nothing stupid.”

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

Kuroo’s nerves bundled together at the pits of his stomach. While Tsukishima did not tell him to wait, he did regardless. He stood near the elevators for half and hour, settled into the dark leather lounge sofas after another. By the second hour, his knee bounced, rattling the keys and coins in his pockets. His fingers laced and unlaced themselves to alleviate his worry shaped in the sad and lonely smile before the silver polish elevator doors shut on them. Each ding made Kuroo’s eyes flicker over and find the blond crown of hair amongst the crowd.

 

None among them had the sleek and shiny locks, the sharp cheekbones and structured sloping jaw or the curve of lips that could change its master’s expression with the slightest curve up or down. After two and a half hours, Kuroo began to wonder if perhaps Tsukishima was sleeping in the room by now. But the image of the smoothed back hair, the harsh glint of a flashy gold watch, and the sneer of the rich man’s face made him stay.

 

Eyes lowered, a pair of shiny patent brown leather shoes stepped into his sight. Kuroo climbed up tailored gray pants, a gray suit buttoned in the middle over a fitted white shirt and a slightly skewed tie from how it was earlier. He could make out the wrinkles running across its flat-ironed state before. The man stared down at him, a comfortable position he was used to—looking down at others. He pointed a finger squarely in Kuroo’s face.

 

“You, stay away from Misaki. He’s mine.”

 

Out of habit, Kuroo’s lips twisted into a smirk, his brow lifted. “How can you call him yours if you don’t even know his real name?”

 

The sneer returned. “I can tell from just one look at you that you’re a nobody. Someone not even worth a second of my time.”

 

“Well, you’ve given me several seconds of it already right now.”

 

The man clicked his tongue, out of a comeback. He jabbed his finger squarely into Kuroo’s forehead, tipping his head back. “I’m warning you. Stay away.” He smoothed out the lines of his clothes before he turned and exited—alone, Kuroo noted. Alone without Tsukishima. His eyes shifted to the elevator. No one. Head turned to the entrance. No one. Quickly standing up, he bolted over to the concierge desk, smoothing out a friendly and cocky smile. His arm rested on the counter as he casually poised himself.

 

“How can I help you, sir?” a freckled woman with a short bob said.

 

“I accidentally left my key card in the room when I went downstairs. I was wondering if I could get a duplicate.”

 

“And your name is?”

 

Kuroo’s brain racked for the name. He didn’t know the blond’s real name—not that he’d use it hear he figured and it couldn’t be Tsukishima either. The name came out like a spat, images of a unfamiliar grin.

 

“Misaki.”

 

The woman’s fingers glided over keyboard and her eyes followed down the list. Kuroo continued as he ran a hand through his dark hair. His eyelids lowered and the smile grew slyer. “I must look like an idiot to you leaving something like that in the room, locking myself out like this.”

 

Her fingers slowed as she looked up. Her cheeks darkened after meeting his eyes and she laughed, crinkling the corner of her eyes. “It happens a lot more than you think, sir.”

 

“Are you sure you’re not just saying that? I wouldn’t put it past a beautiful woman like yourself to lie on my account.”

 

She giggled before shaking her head. “No, no. It does! I’m telling the truth.”

 

“Oh good,” he faked a sigh of relief.

 

Searching again, she looked back to the screen. Her eyes flickering up to Kuroo’s gaze more often quickly in between before she smiled. “I just made a new key card for you. Let me get it.” Her heels clacked as she rounded the back and came back flashing a white card in her hands. She handed it to Kuroo graciously and a tad shy.

 

“Thank you,” he said, saluting with the card between his fingers. Kuroo walked a few paces before laughing and turning around. He sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck as he met the woman’s gaze. “I’m sorry, what room was mine again?”

 

“403,” she answered enthusiastically.

 

He leaned forward into a bow before he turned back to walk over to the elevators.

 

 

 

 

Room 403 was the second room on the left as he got off. He stepped carefully towards it, rapped on the door twice and called out the blond’s name. “Tsukki, you still in there?” His knock turned into a steady thumping pound. “Hey, are you okay? If you don’t open the door, I’m going to.” His fingers drummed on his thighs as he waited. A minute. Two minutes. He turned the key card in his hand and stuck it in the slot before turning the knob down.

 

He stumbled into a dark and silent room, curtains drawn without a peep of the city lights welcomed in. His fingers reached towards the side and flicked on the lights before closing the door shut behind him.

 

“Tsukki?”

 

Each step was followed by a doubtful question. Maybe the blond did manage to slip out of the hotel. Maybe he’d see a corpse sprawled across the bed. He stopped where the wall of the entrance stopped and exposed the queen-sized bed with crumpled up sheets. At the foot were the dark suit and slim tie the boy wore. Kuroo walked in further, his nerves tightening. Behind the mountain of sheets was a pale naked body, curled and clutching, shaking with eyes squeezed tight, traces of tears slipping down flushed cheeks.

 

His eyes fell on red grips around the meatier part of the pale thighs, the blood from the split lip at the corner of the pink mouth, the swell of purple around his eye. Finally, Kuroo saw the red impressions of fingers that wrapped around the slender neck.

 

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered as he rounded the foot of the bed to the blond’s side. Kuroo stumbled over the pants that were tossed on the floor. He shuffled over to the boy’s face, fingers touching over the bruises and marks on his skin.

 

“What the fuck happened? That bastard. I’ll kick his ass when I fi—”

 

“I wanted him to do this!” Tsukishima interrupted with a shout.

 

“I needed him to…” the rest trailed in a shaking muffle.

 

“You idiot!” Kuroo shot up. He was choking, the room grew stuffier and his stance felt unsteady. The air began to smell strongly of vanilla and the warmth of musk. His fingers never left the bruise on the neck. “You could have just talked to me about this.”

 

The pale body on the bed stilled. The head lifted off the bed and the hardened eyes stared back at him, holding him captive in its accusatory gaze. “Would you have done this?”

 

“Do what? Fuck you like this? Leave you a mess like this?”

 

The head nodded, the eyes remained steady.

 

Kuroo let out a laugh of disbelief. He shook his head. “No! Fuck no!”

 

“That’s why I didn’t ask,” Tsukishima answered quietly. His eyes softened, the burdened smile returned. “You look like the kind of person who would treat me gently. And, I don’t need that.”

 

His legs shifted to the edge of the bed. Kuroo stepped back as he watched the toes feel around the carpet for his underwear. He moved without embarrassment, without humiliation of Kuroo following the thin lines and curves underneath naked porcelain skin—marred purple in splotchy patches.

 

“I’m fine without your kindness.” He looked up again. The smile fell and the features washed into indifference. “I never needed it in the first place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends, I am back! It's been a while. Nanowrimo did not go well--I stopped like 2 1/2 weeks in and I started working, which has drained me of all creative energy/energy in general (children literally age me 20 years every day I spend with them). But, I managed to get this out and up so yay! 
> 
> Anyways, how are you all? Good, I hope. Sorry for the darker edge to this chapter. Sorry if it made anyone distressed. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shiver crawled beneath his pale skin at the warmth of the body behind him—hesitating. And instead of touching Tsukishima, he was left with the ghostly sensation of a fleeting breeze grazing the nape of his neck as Kuroo left, shutting the door with a quiet click behind him. Sound in the stifling room echoed like pounding drums in his ear. And the confident string that held his body up snapped, dropping him to the carpeted floor like a bundle of clothes.

Tsukishima counted his heart beat, the countdown of how long he could hold his composure with Kuroo still in the room. Each pulse echoed a crack in exterior like his palms getting clammy or his throat closing up. He feared when he slipped on his shirt and tried to button it up, his fumbling fingers would give him away. Tsukishima continued to keep his back on Kuroo in the dim room, messing up the buttons’ alignment several times. He waited expecting the other man to be able to read his quiet words that left his body like the blind feeling braille to understand books. A shiver crawled beneath his pale skin at the warmth of the body behind him—hesitating. And instead of touching Tsukishima, he was left with the ghostly sensation of a fleeting breeze grazing the nape of his neck as Kuroo left, shutting the door with a quiet click behind him. Sound in the stifling room echoed like pounding drums in his ear. And the confident string that held his body up snapped, dropping him to the carpeted floor like a bundle of clothes.

 

His eyes trailed up the floor to the room’s door, following the steps Kuroo had taken. Silence became just as thick and dizzying alone as if the other was still in the room, taking up more of the empty open space. When the image of the closed solitary door strained his eyes, his gaze moved down, back to the raw and skin flaked hands cushioned by the soft carpet. Scene flickered and repeated like an old film catching on the reels and cycling the frame slides. The knife in his hands. The steady stream of hot blood. The coughing gurgle. The head that tilted back and the eyes that looked up at the air—searching for divine intervention in the last few moments. All of it, repeating and repeating and repeating. His heart raced again, beating against his ribcage trying to tear itself free from the space of his body all ugly and tainted and running with his father’s blood.

 

Tsukishima’s stomach churned and a burn edged up his throat, tickling the back of his nose. The memory continued, skipping and repeating. He lurched forward and vomited all water and froth. The pizza of that afternoon was long gone. The warmth and the intimacy, the mundane of four white walls in a clean white room had been digested and swept away.

 

He didn’t need kindness in this business that was what he had said, the coffin nail that sealed Tsukishima in the hotel room. Tsukishima wiped his spit from his mouth as he leaned back onto his heels. His breathing fell into heavy pants.

 

The beep at the door startled him, gold eyes wide. They fixed themselves on the opening door that should have opened at all. It climbed dusty black shoes, tailored pants, familiar hands that gripped the steel door knob, a chest that rose and fell underneath his dark suit jacket as if he ran up several flights of stairs, the slender flicked cat eyes that held summer hues wincing as he tried to catch his breath, a mess of black hair that looked like the velvet sheen of cat’s fur in disarray just after a few minutes.

 

“Kuroo?” the name left him in disbelief, puffs of air leaving him that barely made out the syllables’ to the other’s name.

 

“You didn’t seriously think I’d leave you like this, did you?”

 

Kuroo swallowed his pants as he straightened up and closed the door behind him. He crossed the space of the room in an instant and reached Tsukishima’s side. Blink, and he was there. All comfort and warm eyes and soft hands that made his skin crawl in shivers as if human touch and cold were one and the same. Tsukishima’s weary eyes ran and traced the other’s features, watched his head shift as he looked down at the slightly darker stain on the carpet from where Tsukishima had thrown up.

 

“Honestly,” Kuroo sighed as he shook his head. “You have to fix that pushing people away problem of yours.” His hand shifted from Tsukishima’s shoulder and down to his upper arm where he pulled the lanky boy up with him, and steadied his balance with a firm grip on his side. Kuroo’s talk became a buzz in his ear. The motions of him being led away from the bed to the shower felt like wadding through the deep end of the pool—all surreal and heavy. Kuroo turned him around to face him and unfastened the poor buttons Tsukishima had tried to put together earlier. He helped slip out the shirt off slumped shoulders and bruised arms. He talked as he folded it up and placed it outside the door where it wouldn’t get wet. And whatever Kuroo was saying, Tsukishima mapped out the gentleness in the tremor of his voice, the delicate hands that reached out to him, the tenderness of softened sly cat features like he had noticed in the empty loft space where their thoughts spilled like confessions never to be shared again.

 

Tsukishima mindlessly settled into the seat outside of the bathtub, in front of the showerhead attached to the wall. His eyes watched as Kuroo rolled up his pants and shirt sleeves, loosening his tie and lifting it over his head to toss outside in the pile of jacket and shirts he had left behind. He stomped over, feet smacking against cold tile. He turned on the shower and hissed—for both their sakes—at the cold spray that came out. “Shit, that’s cold.” Kuroo played around with the knobs, turning one and then the other until the water ran warm. He moved the showerhead over Tsukishima’s head and ran slow fingers through matted down gold locks—darkened now by the water.

“How is it? Warm enough? It’s not cold still right?”

 

Tsukishima closed his eyes. His throbbing split lip curved into a smile. He wadded through dark memories—foggy and echoing, but there. “You’re acting like my brother.” The words had slipped freely. He felt like he was back at the Crow Bar, sipping bourbon as the stained glass colored him with its hue in the space of rich wood and dark leather. This was what this was. Kuroo’s hand through his hair, the echoes of water and voices in the space, the pool at his feet that he found himself splashing softly as he watched it all spiral down the drain—this was the magic he was drawn to that he believed only existed elsewhere.

 

“You have a brother?”

 

“Yeah. When I was younger, and my parents were busy with stuff, he’d be the one to help wash me.”

 

Memories surfaced like toys rising up from the bottom of the tub, breaking the smooth top with a gentle PLOP! as if it belonged there, always meant to return after sinking. It came bouncing in echoes, his high-pitched child voice clashing against tile.

 

_“Kei, you gotta take a bath.”_

_“Don’t wanna!” He said, as he stood bundled and wrapped around with towels at the threshold of the bathroom. “It’s cold!”_

_Akiteru placed a fist on his hips and stood, weight on one leg. “C’mon, Kei. Would I lie to you? It’s not cold, promise!”_

_The tiny Tsukishima pouted, eyeing the spray running from the showerhead. “You said that last time,” he grumbled._

_“Well…last time…okay, true,” the older admitted. “But that was because I was in a hurry and wasn’t checking right. But now, I am. Look, I’ll prove it.” With a wide smile, he shifted the running shower onto his outstretched foot. The small eyes watched for a flinch in his toes, tension of his foot wanting to jerk back. But, the foot stayed still and the childish worries of a deceptive older brother faded._

_His small bare feet shuffled against the floor, cold electrifying up his spine. Akiteru’s laugh bounced against the wall. His free hand tugged at the wrapped up bundle that made up his brother. “You can’t take a shower with all these on.”_

_Momentarily, Akiteru forgot the showerhead was still on as he decided to release it from his grip. Tsukishima remembered the quick eyes that widened after realizing a second too late, gold and round and filled with horrified surprise as the water pray whipped and drenched his clothes. Tsukishima’s lungs had burst with squeamish laughter as the water dripped from soaked hair and clothes stained wet. He brought the towel over his mouth to stifle the giggles that wanted to erupt more. He looked up from between his lashes at the still features that narrowed large moon eyes into something sinister, something that looked like strangers that came into their homes, or shouts that pummeled his family when he was led from the house into a car, stalling outside. And then, the darkness faded into the smile that gave Akiteru his name—bright and shining, a moon full and pregnant against the dark sky, decorated by stars the city wouldn’t let him see._

_Akiteru pointed a stern finger at Tsukishima, smile still splayed. “One, don’t tell mom. Two, now we both have to take a bath so get those towels off.”_

_As he lathered up Tsukishima’s short hair, he’d come around with a raised brow. “See? It isn’t cold, is it? I definitely made sure it was warm for you. Your brother would never lie,” he’d finish with a grin stretching from ear to ear._

_The tiny Tsukishima’s eyes would crinkle. He’d nod once, strong enough for the water to splash forward and back, shampoo foam falling from his hair and landing onto the floor. His heart warmed his chest as he said with a trill, the only truth he had known back then, “Yeah! My brother is the best!”_

The memories bobbed in the water and slid down his arms with Kuroo’s slow and careful hands that sloped over purpling bruises. The laughter and the voices drowned out by the rushing water and Kuroo’s voice that entertained the idea of a younger brother. When he was done washing Tsukishima’s hair, cleaned the disgust of punishment and the night off the pale body, he turned off the water, helping the lanky boy walk over and ease himself into the tub already filled. The water splashed over the edge as he dipped his toes in and settled down.

 

Kuroo began to run water over his feet to wash off the soap that clung. “What was he like?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at Tsukishima who had his legs pulled up to his chest and water circling up to his neck.

 

Tsukishima didn’t pause, as he would have before. His voice much deeper than it was back then bounced against tile, echoing long ago scenes. “The best,” he answered. “My brother was the best.”

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

He was grateful for Kuroo for handing him a plain shirt he could just pull over his head, sweatpants that were not tailored to him, and sneakers that surprisingly fit him. He was thankful for the suit he did not have to slip on, for the Tsukishima Kei he did not have to be. He was relieved as he was tugged out of the hotel room after his hair dried down into a barely damp mess of gold twisted ends. They shut the door on the room with the curtains still drawn, closed of the city view and its ceaseless lights. Kuroo’s car was silenced of the sorrys he shared. Instead, the electric heater in the seats melted Tsukishima into a sleep he didn’t realize his body craved. The blur of the post lights down the highways lulled him into a dreamless slumber.

 

Tsukishima woke up because he felt the world was too still. The rumble of rolling tires against pavement, the shake of the engine against the car, the sound of life moving outside fell silent. And Tsukishima opened his eyes up to the sight of rows of other cars, cement pillars and walls. His eyes slowed as it moved across his view from his crooked sight, head tucked in the hammock formed from the seatbelt.

 

“Mornin’ princess,” Kuroo greeted beside him.

 

Tsukishima slowly sat up, feeling something fall off his shoulders and onto his lap. He picked it up delicately and unsure, realizing it was a suit jacket. Kuroo’s, he could tell from the cologne left behind. His eyes darted over to the other who already began opening up his door. “You can crash at my place tonight. Trains are closed anyways.”

 

Tsukishima paused as he watched the man get out. A few seconds later, the head ducked back inside. “We’re at my apartment because no way would you tell me where you live right?” His lips lifted, arrogant and knowing.

 

While that wasn’t Tsukishima’s reason for pause, it was a truth nonetheless. Sleep still thick in his motions, he unclicked his seatbelt and fumbled as he tried to open the car door. His legs tingled as he stepped out.

 

The elevator they entered took them up to the fifth floor, the second highest in the building from the floor options listed. Kuroo whistled as he spun the keys in his hand. Tsukishima trudged behind, desperate for some more sleep and keenly aware of the pain of the bruises left behind, the worst being the ring of hands around his neck that would not leave him for a few days at best.

 

Kuroo slipped in the keys to the lock and opened up the door. Trailing behind, Tsukishima took off his shoes and held the folded up clothes closer to his chest, an instinctive guard against the unknown of the apartment. Kuroo welcomed him into his humble abode whose space and stretch and open windows was nothing near modest. Each step in opened up the room, the kitchen, the living room with a wide t.v. set across, the stretch of deep blue velvet of a couch. And the midst of it all, curled up at the crook of the couch and the armrest closest to the window was dark roots sharply fading into sharp bleached hair, tied back into a low ponytail. The small body had his knees pulled up to his chest and resting above where his hands that held a horizontal phone.

 

“That’s Kenma, my roommate,” Kuroo pointed over casually.

 

The idea of a roommate sounded strange to Tsukishima, especially in Kuroo’s field of work. “Is he part of…”

 

“Nope, not yakuza,” Kuroo answered. As he walked over to the open-air kitchen, he spoke to the roommate. “Kenma, say hi.”

 

The bent knees shifted over to the side, exposing angled face, wary feline eyes and oversized frames that made up the expressionless face of Kenma.

 

“Hi,” his soft voice managed to maintain the indifference his eyes held as they looked at Tsukishima.

 

“Hi,” Tsukishima greeted back, awkward by the seemingly not-so welcoming greeting.

 

Kuroo coming back with a cold bottle of water handed it to Tsukishima. “He’s like that. You’ll start to be able to read him better the longer you’re around him.” While that seemed improbable, Tsukishima didn’t say another word and they left Kenma back to his focus on his phone.

 

He was brought over to Kuroo’s room, a mess of a bed, but a spotless room otherwise. Tsukishima rested his cheek on the frame of the door with Kuroo’s back pressed against the other side.

 

“Not what I expected.”

 

“But the shock here is that you’ve been thinking of my room at all,” Kuroo teased.

 

Kuroo sidestepped into a waltz into his room, inviting Tsukishima further inside. “You can sleep here and leave to wherever you go tomorrow morning.”

 

“What about you?”

 

“I got Kenma’s room and if he’s in a mood,” Kuroo paused as his hand ran against the nape of his neck, back up to his hair, “Well, I always have the lovely space of the living room.”

 

Tsukishima opened his mouth in protest, but Kuroo gave him a pointed look and a finger aimed at him. “If I’m like your brother, then we’d both want you to sleep right now. This instant. In that bed.” His finger moved over to the bed that in its mess gave the allure of plush comfort and easy dreams. He could hear Akiteru’s voice, hollowed out, a shell against his ear, repeating words that sounded much like Kuroo’s. He accepted his defeat with a quiet nod.

 

“Good,” Kuroo said. pulling Tsukishima over to the bed as he stepped towards the door. “I don’t like my Tsukki like this. You better have your bite back by tomorrow morning.” Kuroo grinned as he closed him into the room.

 

Tsukishima listened to the footsteps fade away before he sat slowly onto the bed. His eyes looked over the nightstand, a plain lamp, a old digital clock, some spare change, a black pen, the cord of his phone charger, and two yellow prescription bottles. Tsukishima pricked by curiosity picked up one and turned it, reading its label. Strong sleeping pills. The one he held was empty while the other was half gone. His turned his head to fall onto the mess of sheets. It had given off the image of blissful sleep, but now, the wrinkles and creases and the sheets half pulled off the mattress shouted restless demons hidden in the mattress springs.

 

The sleep that Kuroo demanded out of him never came even hours and hours late into the morning. Tsukishima got out of the bed and padded his way out of the room. His eyes tried to make out the space, see if the figure curled at the couch was still there or if Kuroo found his sleep on the velveteen couch. Neither were there. He heard a soft sound and his eyes darted to the dimly lit kitchen. Kenma filled a glass a quarter up. While drinking the water, his head turned and the angular shaped eyes fell on Tsukishima who still stood at the threshold of Kuroo’s room.

 

“Hi,” he said.

 

“Hi,” the other repeated or greeted back, he couldn’t really tell the difference in his tone.

 

Tsukishima padded over to the couch and touched the fabric before easing into it. Kenma finished drinking his water before speaking again, loud in the awkward silence. “You can’t fall asleep?”

 

Tsukishima pursed his lips. “No, not really.” He scratched the sides of his head. “Maybe I’m just used to my own bed that sleeping anywhere else is hard.”

 

“Kuroo can’t sleep either.” Kenma said bluntly. “He’s a good guy, but he has the worst nightmares.”

 

Tsukishima turned his head to be able to catch Kenma’s eyes. “What does that have anything to do with if he’s a good person?”

 

The other placed the emptied glass back onto the rack as he silently made his way over to the living room. “Usually those with nightmares and insomnia like Kuroo has, doesn’t it make you wonder? Well, at least, I’ve never let it bother me, but people like you would ask questions.”

 

“What would I wonder?”

 

“What does he feel guilty about that he can’t sleep at night?”

 

Tsukishima’s eyes stared long and hard at Kenma, letting the question fall into his mind like a heavy rock leaving a ripple across the surface. “You don’t wonder about it?”

 

“Kuroo took me in at my lowest point,” he said, “I don’t need to know.” The smaller figure settled beside Tsukishima on the couch, a cat’s eyes peering into his soul with his bright illuminated eyes. “Can you say the same?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never intended for this fic to be such a slow burning slow burn, but it is. Sorry y'all. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m okay,” a phrase that sounded thick and heavy as he said it, a rock weighing on his tongue. Words he had said so often to her for the first time came out as a lie. Tsukishima rolled onto his side, pulling his legs up into his body. He wanted to tell her, relay the scenes—all that blood, all that pain, how terrible and screeching a person could scream.

Kenma left a beating and brief pause. Eyes intent on Tsukishima, scanned his face, read his question, he could tell in the half second he asked and the half second he got up from the couch—as if he had to be level with the other at that very moment—that Kuroo’s roommate assessed and appraised him. If Kenma could read Tsukishima’s character through the changes in his breathing, whether or not his eyes dilated, the slightest lines on his face, he got an answer that allowed him to pad back over to the closed door to his room. What the other saw in Tsukishma must have been good or at least he approved because he said with a hand resting on the doorknob, “Who are we to judge, though.” He seemed to backtrack. “It’s this late and both of us can’t sleep either so, maybe, Kuroo’s just in the right company.”

 

A sliver of dull light snuck out of Kenma’s room as he opened the door. Tsukishima certainly didn’t stay with Kenma that long to hear the changes in his voices as Kuroo mentioned (they probably spent two minutes time together in total), but transfixed and captivated by his eyes from the start, Tsukishima guessed he saw a glint of joy and approval that had yet reached the roll of his words.

 

“Night,” one said monotonously, remembering courtesy and politeness.

 

“Night,” answered the other, catching sight of bare lean arms and dark hair poking out from under the sheets.

 

The door closed on the space the two shared, leaving Tsukishima alone—still very much awake and with thoughts, both his, Kenma’s, and of a haunting past that began to peel back agonizingly slow.

 

The clock ticked steadily. The battle that cycled in his mind pushed Kenma’s question to the forefront, casting aside the last comment that tried to stop this current process in the first place, Tsukishima was sure.

 

The question steeped like tea meeting boiled water. The content had always been there, nuzzled close to the dark border of things he subconsciously didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to pay attention to. Now, it spread, staining him. Kenma offered the simmering kettle, poured it out into the cup, and left it.

 

Tsukishima did not know Kuroo, not as much as Kuroo knew him—both as a Tsukishima and as a man he had hired. He carried a photo of a little newborn babe cradled in happy arms, in front of a house freshly painted and trees neatly trimmed. He spoke of his brother, his father. His fingers were interlaced with men like Ukai who raised his family like his own blood. Kuroo knew the targets Tsukishima took on, held his gaze with others. Even if it was miniscule details like the pallor of his face, or a long lost love for a brother long long lost, Kuroo Tetsurou undeniably knew him more than he would be pleased with.

 

Who was Kuroo Tetsurou? The question bobbed up and down with the incoming tides. Tsukishima brushed his fingers over the soft velvet couch. His eyes skimmed the room, faintly illuminated by the moon’s sliced out smile. From the contents of his apartment alone, Kuroo Tetsurou had refined and expensive taste—a large stretch of a television that covered most of the opposite wall, marbled countertops and a smooth sofa, the undeniable open space that would be the envy in such a cramped, urban city like Tokyo.

 

Tsukishima leaned forward to peer at the organized mess on the coffee table. Business magazines and coffee table books, splayed out. He wasn’t sure if they were there purely for design or if the man actually looked through them. There were jotted notes in prim, model student handwriting that Tsukishima could not place into context so he moved passed them. There was an old ceramic coaster with a random cat design on it. Tsukishima picked it up between his fingers. He snickered at the feline’s design. Whether gifted or not, it would’ve reminded him of Kuroo too. Tsukishima placed it back down on top of old bundled newspapers with a collage of stains—coffee in one corner, something darker like wine or soda at the other.

 

The DVDs displayed underneath the TV were massive and varied—some horror, a good handful or so of action, and a wide breadth of comic book adaptations. When those just confirmed the actual child the older man was, Tsukishima continued his sleepless induced investigation around the house. Things like pictures and the book or two. The fridge that was occupied with food and a matching amount of beer.

 

He could see the crack of the sun beginning to burn away the night. The moon beginning to lose its shine against a paling sky. Tsukishima sighed. These were the things he learned from Kuroo Tetsurou from looking through the contents of his room:

 

1\. Kuroo Tetsurou was an insomniac and tried to clinically cure himself with abused vials of sleeping pills.

2\. Kuroo Tetsurou was a man who found a path through chaos as seen with the haphazard construction of his coffee table and the arrangement in his room.

3\. The man enjoyed a good deal of movies, but found most enjoyment out of the cliché hero films.

4\. He enjoyed beer, a lot.

5\. He was sentimental with a coaster that, Tsukishima finally decided after a long while, must have been gifted and photos of wide grinning friends he kept near his films and a few others he kept at his desk.

 

But, a room, an apartment could only peel back so much of a person’s character. It didn’t answer Kuroo Tetsurou, a traitor of the Shiratorizawa name if anything else could aptly describe him as he worked together with a group that should have long been ash and dust. It didn’t ease the hunger left by Kenma’s assessment of his fellow roommate.

 

Kuroo was indeed a good guy—maybe…perhaps in the loose sense of the word without moral considerations. However, he was plagued with nightmares that no amount of medication could absolve him from. Nightmares like those stemmed from guilt. What could he be guilty of?

 

Tsukishima’s pulse reminded him of the barely covered necklace of fingers that wrapped itself around his neck. Had he done something wrong? If so, what was it? Did he kill someone? Is he being haunted by the same trailing scents of acidic stomach fluids and the metallic burn of blood? Something about the avalanche of his own assumptions prickled the back of his throat—another question at the border Tsukishima turned his back on for today.

 

The sun burned the night away further until the ocean of comforting dark blue faded into a brighter stretch of warm orange skies across the horizon that peaked between cityscapes. Tsukishima padded his way to his room, collecting the bundle of stained clothes he had folded and left at the foot of the bed. His eyes caught the time. Barely the crack of dawn and he was slipping out of the place like a thief. Tucking the bundle under his arm, he gently closed the door behind him. From the entrance, narrowing his view again of the lofty apartment, Kenma’s words etched across the walls.

 

_What does he feel so guilty about that he can’t sleep at night?_

 

_I don’t need to know. Can you say the same?_

 

His lips twisted into a grim line as he turned his back onto Kuroo’s home. Greeted by the morning dew and cold, Tsukishima sighed. He didn’t answer Kenma—well, the other didn’t give him room to say another word in the half second of one and the half second of the other. But, if he was given the chance, breathing room for a word or two, Tsukishima would have told him. _No, I can’t_.

 

Maybe Kenma wouldn’t have shown him that glint of a smile in his eyes, reserved for those he could trust.

 

 

 

Home embraced him, every inch and curve. A bed that knew his shape, a room that smelled like him whatever that was, a kitchen relatively stocked without the beers, a space lack of a television set, and not a single photo of friends or family. Stretched on his back, arms slung in both directions to take up the entire width of the bed, Tsukishima stared at his ceiling—prickling dots of plaster and a spiral of the room’s light bulb. The night before felt like it had lasted a year. His body certainly thought it was, aching in joints and sighing at familiar comfort of his sturdy mattress. Tsukishima let his head, heavy in its weight, turn to the side where his personal phone rested at eye level.

 

He was spent. He was tired, more so now and today than all the other sleepless all nighters he had pulled. In this particular haze of not falling asleep but very conscious of his bones turned lead, Tsukishima slid his arm up and fumbled to grasp his phone. Eyes bleary and the phone a sudden shock of bright and unforgiving light in the dim room, Tsukishima squinted behind the cold frames of his glasses and searched through his contacts, finding the only one he needed and pressed the button to call.

 

The phone rang, a rolling cycling hum of a machine. Tsukishima pushed his head back into the mattress to get a better view of the time. 7 AM, it read. He waited. He knew the other end would pick up sooner or later. Tsukishima lifted his hand up to run through the softer ends of his blond hair. His shifting movements stirred the odor of the hotel’s soap and shampoo. Nothing like the calmness of lavender or the warmth of the vanilla or the burn and strength of musk.

 

Finally, it clicked, and the sound of the quiet greeting on the other end brought a wash of calm Tsukishima needed. If last night felt like a year, the voice so clear in his ear felt like a lifetime. “Hello?”

 

“It’s me,” Tsukishima answered. He closed his eyes to picture the face with the voice. The softened wrinkles around her eyes, the long tresses of her hair that always smelled like lavender. The sleep and safety he found as a child as he buried his face in the crook of her neck. All of that was definitely another life.

 

His mother’s laughter bubbled soft. Tsukishima could picture her hand lifting to touch her lips as she did so. Maybe she’d tuck the phone between her ear and shoulder as she prepared for the day—lunch for the both of them (well, when it was still the both of them), setting the dry dishes away. “Of course I know it’s you, sweetheart. Did you forget we have caller ID?”

 

He did, but he didn’t admit it.

 

“I’m okay,” a phrase that sounded thick and heavy as he said it, a rock weighing on his tongue. Words he had said so often to her for the first time came out as a lie. Tsukishima rolled onto his side, pulling his legs up into his body. He wanted to tell her, relay the scenes—all that blood, all that pain, how terrible and screeching a person could scream. But, what would that accomplish? Tsukishima would only gain her worry, her nervous fear, perhaps even an abrupt visit to his apartment and snatch him out, drag him back to an impromptu home.

 

A static noise of what could have been a sigh or just a heavy breath echoed in his ear. “Good,” she sounded back, sincere, truthful.

 

“Sorry I didn’t come visit like I promised.” His eyes darted and his voice tried to silence the hesitation that came with thinking up an excuse. “Another work project came on and it got really busy.”

 

“It’s fine,” she reassured. He could hear the faucet start to run on the other end, paired with plates clinking together. She must have just finished eating breakfast. “I saw Tadashi the other day. He said you two met up for breakfast.”

 

“Yeah,” because what else was there to say.

 

“Have you been eating well?”

 

Tsukishima shrugged as if she could see. “I’ve been eating.”

 

“Kei,” her voice lowered, a maternal rumble.

 

“What?”

 

He heard her exasperated huff. “The next time I see you, I don’t want to see you more skin and bones than you already are.”

 

Tsukishima turned his free arm that was slung out and pressed against the mattress. He fisted his hand and watched his forearm flex. He wasn’t skinny, but he was on the lanky side of lean. Nothing like cut muscle or a sturdy build. Nothing like steady arms that had balanced him, supporting most of his weight as he walked to the bathroom. “Yes, yes,” he said.

 

The silence stretched after. His eyes shut. His ears pricked with the dishes clattering against the soapy basin of the sink, the clinking of spoons or maybe chopsticks against the ceramic dishes. Tsukishima pictured sitting at the table, watching the well postured back. Her hair would be swept and twisted into a low bun in the early morning, and taken down and tousled with as she headed to work—all shining blonde locks of kissed sun. His eyes opened to small slits to stare at his mirrored reflection, falling on the mess of gold on his own head.

 

Tsukishima rolled onto his back again. His heart thumped with a growing alarming speed that he felt it pulse at the base of his throat. Again, the boulder rested on his tongue, weighing it down. “Mom?”

 

She was quick to answer, always quick at his call no matter how soft, “Yes, Kei?”

 

How could he ask it when he had never done so before? Even as a kid, even when a blanket of black fell gently over his memories, he had never asked it before. Tsukishima had never prodded the gaping void of his life. He had always sensed his mother’s fretful aversion and stopped himself short—letting the thought dissolve like salt to water.

 

“Were we…” He swallowed and his body became smaller and smaller as the seconds ticked. “Were we bad people? Is that why we ran away from the city? Is that why dad and Akiteru were ki—” She didn’t stop him, but the silence was enough of a shrill scream to stop his mouth from speaking any further. He snapped his mouth shut before he rolled onto his other side, back facing the mirror, front facing the small window screen. He waited and waited and waited. His heart beating drowned out the sound of the faucet turning off, of slippers shuffling against the floor, of the legs of the chair scraping heavy as it was being pulled out.

 

“Sweetheart,” the way she said it sounded like a tired sigh escaping her, worn and drained, “where did you even get that idea?”

 

Tsukishima didn’t indulge her with an answer partially because he couldn’t tell her about Ukai and the surviving men from the group or even Kuroo for that matter and the other half that held his tongue was the fact that he was afraid of the terrible crack that would rip his voice if he tried to talk—his vocals became a tightly packed ball of anxious nerves.

 

“They’re family,” was the only answer she gave. “They were family. That’s all there is to it.”

 

He heard the careful craft, her easy side step. She had done this before, he realized. Was it with him? With someone else? A rival gang? A cop?

 

“They were family,” she repeated. “That’s enough.”

 

Her words fell cold. Tsukishima shivered as he pulled the sheets closer to his body. This was not his mother—not fretful laughter, not careful fingers skimming smoothly over a jade cup, not a figure doubled over huffing to pick him up from school every day without fail from elementary. But likewise, on the phone now, he had become someone else’s son—a someone who carried on a name for a world that worked by moonlight, a someone who was killed for a deadly sin like greed or pride, a someone who at his age too slid a sharp thin knife against a sweat drenched neck and watched dark blood pool and bubble when it gushed out too quickly, a someone’s ghost he had followed and gained Ukai’s approval, but not yet his entire respect.

 

“I hope you don’t let that thought sit in your head too long.”

 

He lied, agreeing. Of course, that was not how Tsukishima’s mind worked. Everything seeped and stained like watercolor to paper, tea to water, ink to a page. It spanned and never stopped until it reached the edges.

 

The phone call didn’t last long after that. Tsukishima let the palm sized phone flop onto the mattress. He eyed the bundle that laid just a few ways away on the floor. His eyes lowered and his hand ran down the shirt. Neither was him, Tsukishima thought. He needed to get rid of it. Pulling the shirt over his head and slipping out of the sweats, he folded it up before walking over to the washer and throwing both in. He closed the machine’s top and started it. His room filled with the sound and shake of it all.

 

Next, the suit.

 

Tsukishima padded over to the lump of clothes. He toed each article of clothing apart from the other from their tangled embrace. The stain of blood and other things. The wrinkled haphazard lines of the white shirt. He noticed a missing button. All of it needed to go. Breathing in, he swooped them up into his arms and stomped over to his kitchen, roughly pulling out a large garbage bag and shoving it all in. Tied up, Tsukishima left it by his trashcan to make note of throwing it away when garbage pickup came.

 

Bare skin exposed, Tsukishima shivered with the cold air that circled the room. His feet moved him back to the bed, relishing against the smooth sheets against him and settling into the warm outline he had left just earlier. He touched for his phone again, pulling it back to his body. He unlocked it before he opened up a browser.

 

The ink bled, and bled.

 

His fingers typed the characters on the search bar.

 

**[Kuroo Tetsurou]**

 

The screen came back.

 

**About 7,000 results (0.54 seconds)**

 

His thumb hesitated to pull the page down. In a burst, he pushed his faced down phone underneath his pillow. No, no, no—his stomach twisted. Tsukishima squeezed his eyes shut. In the forced darkness, Kuroo’s face began to form. A mess of hair, a crinkling smile, a knowing tilt to his head as he looked in with hands placed above him on the hood of the car. _We’re at my apartment because no way would you tell me where you live right?_ If Tsukishima asked…if he just asked him, Kuroo would tell him. He would. That was who Kuroo was. All truth and confessions leaving his lips with such a comfortable grin splayed.

 

The pad of his index finger continued to stroke the smooth surface of the phone. Debating and debating every time it ran down its spine. His finger stopped. Why was he hesitating? If he was going to do a job well, he’d have to research his clients properly, including the one that hired him. This was him being objective. He needed this kind of clarity.

 

But the hesitation remained.

 

He thought of gentle hands running through his hair, working carefully around bruises that had yet turned purple. A stolen kiss that tasted like margherita sauce. There were also the crisp scent he carried, and the warmth eyes that seemed to hold a season in its hue.

 

Tsukishima flipped onto his stomach now. He grabbed a fistful of the sheets in both hands and groaned, “Shit. What’s wrong with me?”

 

In the end, he fell asleep with the sound of the washing machine’s shaking cycle.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

The long night continued where it left off again. Tsukishima pulled on a different suit—one not stained of the other day’s sins. He sat in the backseat of a limo tinted car with Yamamoto, the raccoon yankee, as his chauffer. He propped his cheeks on his knuckles, head resting against the car’s window. He watched the world turn unbeknownst to them. The music playing on the radio was drowned out with the yankee’s disgruntled mumbling.

 

“Why do I gotta drive this bastard around?” was the general sum of his complaints.

 

His gold eyes slid to stare at the clenched grips on the wheel, trace down the short cut on the side of his head and the dryness on his cheeks. Tsukishima propped one foot on the central console. He nudged the other in the rib with the tip of his shoe. The car jerked with Yamamoto’s screech before straightening. Tsukishima held his laugh.

 

He received the stink eye through the rear view mirror. “You trying to kill us both?”

 

And again, the grumble continued but much louder, “Why do I gotta drive this bastard around?”

 

“Where’s Kuroo?” Tsukishima asked after the fit quieted down again to tongue clicking and glares. He had to admit how uncomfortable it felt walking and talking as a yakuza boss without the other around—a strange pillar that helped him draw the line between the clan’s needs and Tsukishima.

 

“Boss is with Ushiwaka.”

 

“Ushi…” Tsukishima’s brows furrowed into deep running lines. “…waka?”

 

“You met him. Shiratorizawa’s head, Ushijima Wakatoshi.”

 

 _Ushiwaka_.

 

Tsukishima tapped his toe to the other again. There was less of a reaction, though still a small jerk. The blond twisted his lips into a purse, slightly disappointed.

 

“Stop doing that,” the other hissed.

 

Ignoring him, he pressed on, “You were part of Nekoma too with Kuroo, right?”

 

“Yeah, got a problem with that?”

 

“And you’re both now with Shiratorizawa.”

 

From Tsukishima’s angle, head against the window, he could see Yamamoto’s lips thin into a line. His eyes remained steady at the car ahead of them where Ukai and the others rode in. All the questions Tsukishima had hesitated on in his room felt easy to ask with the other man in the car—easy to prod a clear lackey than the boss.

 

“And you’re also helping me--”

 

“I ain’t helping your ass.”

 

“Okay, the Tsukishima group,” he corrected, “to gain its power back and take over again.” There was a beat of a pause. “Why?”

 

The roughened hands gripped and released the leather steering wheel. “Me and boss, we’re still Nekoma. Even if we have to follow that Ushiwaka, in our blood, we’re still Nekoma. That’s what boss always told me after Shiratorizawa took over.”

 

The car slowed at the red traffic light. The crossing became a sea of people. Tsukishima watched one and flickered over to the next as he waited for Yamamoto to continue.

 

“And Nekoma and Tsukishima, we’re family.”

 

“Family?”

 

The yankee left one hand on the wheel and turned to look back at Tsukishima with one lifted brow.

 

“Don’tcha know?”

 

“What?”

 

“Your mom, she was Boss Nekomata’s daughter. She was arranged to marry into Tsukishima to help stabilize the entire group.”

 

_They were family._

 

_That’s all there is to it._

 

_They were family._

 

_That’s enough._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, it's me. It's been 84 years, hasn't it? I'm in a state of writer's block again (lbr when am I not). So it may take another decade for another chapter to come out. So I'm sorry now, and I'm going to also tack on an apology for the future. Also, hello chapters that advance the plot like a turtle (I'm sure this is because of the block too). If I'm going to be honest, I'm winging this entire thing. Can you tell? You probz can. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. If you have anything you'd like to see happen soon or characters you want to see pop up either again or show up, tell me! Any and all suggestions help especially in my current state. 
> 
> Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His brother did not answer. He just shook, fidgeted in the same spot—weight moving from one leg to the other. His breathing grew jagged, labored. Kuroo noticed the beads of sweat slide parallel to the tears that shook free from the other’s waterline. The man opened his mouth to answer. A cavernous black hole that wanted to vomit a sin it had consumed. But, he was stopped by the noise that seemed too well timed, like cliché events thrown into manga and movies.

The air in the room was stagnant and stuffy. Filled to the brim with people, Kuroo eyed the convocation from the door’s threshold, standing beside the sign that pointed “Executive Board Meeting for Shiratorizawakai.” The stand itself had elicited a good chuckle out of him the first time he saw it—before when it read a different name. An elbow pressed into his side, motioning at the board. The gold eyes crinkled. The lips splayed wide in an open smile. The head shook, loosening up some of the gold locks in place. _Who are we even pretending to be? Decent, upstanding salary men?_ But now, the little poster made his lips pull tight together. And the ease he felt standing at the back of the room dissipated into an uncomfortable crawl under his skin. His eyes smoothed over each back that faced him—some slouched, others rim rod straight in posture and others settling in the middle.

 

Slowly, his eyes lifted to the front of the tearoom, the main attraction for the meeting. Ushijima and another man sat facing each other—profiles towards the rest. A large bottle of sake sat between them, the sweet scent filling the closed up room. The other with bright spiky hair and a demon’s wide smile stared back at the expressionless Ushijima. They sat cross-legged on the mat, but Kuroo could feel the energy bursting from the other as he shifted his weight from side to side.

 

The scene played out nostalgic—the ceremony of sworn brothers. The bottle was taken up and poured out into porcelain cup, spilling out and over into the small wood box that held it. The sound of the drink trickling in the silence encouraged Kuroo to close his eyes before Ushijima reached for the cup and began.

 

**“With this drink, I call you brother and kin.”**

 

Voice echoed voice, though Ushijima’s deep roll to his words seemed much starker to the louder enthusiasm of the other—harking back.

 

_His breathing hitched. The panic festered in him too, contagious. He had that effect, spreading his emotions to others with his touch, his voice, the slight dilation to his eyes. The fingers grabbed at Kuroo’s leather jacket, fisting it in his hands—losing its strength from the bubbling fear._

 

_“I did it. I didn’t mean to. It just…I just…Kuroo, Kuroo, Kuroo.” And after his name came a string of swears that left with spit flying. He let go and a hand raced up to his hair and pulled the short gold strands taut._

 

_Kuroo could see the tears prick at the corner of the bloodshot eyes. The man he swore as brother had his eyes darting, landing from corner to corner of the room behind Kuroo. His jugular vein prominent now with his straining neck._

 

**“With this drink, we are blood.”**

 

_“Hey,” Kuroo breathed out, trying to get his words through. “You have to calm down. What happened? I can’t help you if I don’t know what the fuck is going on.” He lunged out and gripped at his arms tight until he felt a pulse jump, feeling the goose bumps under his palms._

 

_His brother did not answer. He just shook, fidgeted in the same spot—weight moving from one leg to the other. His breathing grew jagged, labored. Kuroo noticed the beads of sweat slide parallel to the tears that shook free from the other’s waterline. The man opened his mouth to answer. A cavernous black hole that wanted to vomit a sin it had consumed. But, he was stopped by the noise that seemed too well timed, like cliché events thrown into manga and movies._

 

_They both were startled at the sudden shouts, bursts of gunfire. Kuroo shook his head. His eyes darted to the doors, cautious someone might suddenly appear. “Explain later. Something’s up and we have to go.” By how loud the noise was, everything was happening by the front gate, too close for comfort to stick around any longer. Whatever the conflict was, he didn’t want to get them caught by a stray bullet that sought a body to lodge itself in._

 

_Kuroo pulled, but the other became a tree, rooted in the place he had danced around. “I tried to do it. I tried to,” he swallowed thickly before continuing, “I tried killing him. A-and he-he ran off to Shiratorizawa.” His gold eyes widened as his ears pricked to the sound finally. His head whipped to the open screen doors towards the direction of the front gate and then back to Kuroo. “They’re here. They’re here because of what happened. They’re going to kill them. Oh god, my dad, my mom—” He couldn’t even say the last name._

 

_“I shouldn’t have done it.” A strangled laugh left him. It sounded disgusting and gnarled in its roots. A drop of dread fell into him, and stretched. “It was all because I was greedy and ashamed and I didn’t realize why he would choose him over me. I wasn’t—” The barrage of sounds stopped him momentarily. “I should’ve understood. It’s for the good of the family. He decided it would’ve been better for the group. A better head for the 5th generation.”_

 

_His laugh left him abruptly like a tv program turning into loud white noise—blaring and crackling and cringing to hear. “I should have known. I should have known.” The gold hair shook back and forth. Palms upward, he clenched them into tight fists. The veins along his wrists peeked through. “Blood doesn’t guarantee anything. He was family too. And I…I tried to kill him. I tried to kill him because I thought…”_

 

_Kuroo tried his best to keep his ears pricked to the chaos outside while also listening to the babble of the other that stringed together slowly._

 

_His brows furrowed together, and his jaw clenched before he could speak again. “You tried killing him?”_

 

_Crazy laughter gone, and body slacked under Kuroo’s grip, the other answered back. “Yes,” he breathed out, “and that’s why they’re here. I tried killing a brother. I tried killing family.”_

 

_“Hey, hey, slow down. We can…” Fix? No, they couldn’t fix this. This was a crime, one with a consequence that drained his face pale quickly._

 

**“With this drink, my life I lay down for you.”**

 

_His eyes lifted, and the colors that held him—gold pooling and melted—made him take a wary step back. But the other reached out. Hands seizing Kuroo’s retreating fingers that slipped off him. “Isn’t it amazing? His nickname fits him. Small giant,” he repeated the name reflectively, a forlorn smile tugging at the edges of his lips as heavy as the world. “Look at how large a shadow he casts. He stirred up Shiratorizawa to fight for him. No one could do that.”_

 

_“Hey, okay. Stop. Stop talking. Stop—” He knew where this was going, where the melancholy dip of the other’s tone led in their winding conversation. Kuroo tried to pull back more, but the tree that wrapped its branches around him, the one that called him his sworn brother, the one he had shared sake with, kept him in its reach._

 

_“I’m a traitor to the Tsukishima name. Do you understand, Kuroo?”_

 

_He did._

 

_“You know what you have to do, don’t you?”_

 

_He did._

 

_“I can’t.” The answer came out coarser than he anticipated. Scratchy with his nerves, and shaken with a heart that suddenly didn’t want to call his body home._

 

_The smile stayed. It’d haunt him. That, Kuroo was sure of. The fingers that had managed to wrap themselves around his wrist lifted his hands and rested them on top of his collarbone, encircling his neck. “Do it, Kuroo.”_

 

_“No, fuck no!” He shouted, trying to twist free from the grasp. When did he become so strong or was it Kuroo who had already resigned to this as well and his body acted upon it. “You’re my brother! How could you—”_

 

_“These are the rules of the family. We’re Tsukishima and Nekoma first before we are brothers.”_

 

_Kuroo’s mouth gaped open slightly. How could he have said that? How could he even let those words pass with such a fraying smile._

 

**“May heaven seal our fate.”**

 

_His fingers trembled around the throat, much thicker under his touch than he realized. Kuroo could feel his pulse, thumping loudly like the sound of drums beating at a festival._

 

_“No one else should do this except you,” he said, sensing the hesitation. His fingers kept their lock around his wrist perhaps as a preventative measure from Kuroo running away. But, who could with the war raging just a few steps away. He could hear names being shouted, instructions and directions roaring. And the drums of war pounding mercilessly in both men’s bodies._

 

_Compelled to speak during Kuroo’s silence, he continued, listing things as if he was reminding him of small chores to do while he was gone for a vacation. “Eat well, okay? And lay off those drinking sessions with Bokuto. Your liver needs a break. And both of you shouldn’t give Akaashi such a hard time, all right? And help out old man Nekomata more. You might not see it, but he definitely sees some potential in you with the group.” The laundry list of things tumbled out, small things he could rack out as he felt the weight of Kuroo’s hands around his neck._

 

_“Tell my parents that I love them, even though I’m sure I’ve put them through hell. And tell…” He paused. His teeth bit down viciously on his lower lip. “Tell Kei, I’m sorry for being so weak. Tell him, his brother wasn’t as great as he pictured him to be. Tell him, be better. Get out of this life.”_

 

_“How could I break that to him?”_

 

_The other glossed over the question with a fond gaze and a crook to his head. He stared back at Kuroo. “Take care of him for me, okay? Promise me, you’ll help him out and watch over him. My last request as a brother.”_

 

_Kuroo nodded, afraid of his voice cracking if he said an answer. The hands dropped and the body sighed itself into relief. The eyes closed with long lashes splayed against smooth skin. He probably counted to a million before his hands acting, tightening it in increments._

 

_“Don’t stop. No matter what. No matter what I do. Keep going.”_

 

_He listened. His wrap grew so tight, Kuroo couldn’t tell where his pulse ended and the other began. Slowly, they sank into the mess of the futon that was splayed out. It was a strange thought that passed his mind. Let him be comfortable. As if that was the most he could do for him. Sweat began to build across his forehead, slide down the slope of his nose as his grip wrapped around more and more. That was when instinct kicked in. The thrashing, the nails digging into the back of his hands. The knees that pounded against the small of Kuroo’s back as his feet pounded on the ground, trying to kick off the weight of the man that straddled him. His face grew a stunning shade of red and his lips parted. This time, no words came out, but desperation. His body screamed for air, but only felt the crushing strangle._

 

_Why are you fighting?_

 

_You wanted this!_

 

_You made me do this!_

 

_Kuroo wanted to scream too. He supposed he did to put more strength in his hands. How long did it take? It felt like a century before the body slacked completely, before all that thrashing became ghostly sensations against him. He let go of the neck, palms clammy. He stared down at the face that just a moment ago looked at him and spoke to him. His mouth opened to speak his name, call out to him and hope that he’d call back._

 

_But, he wouldn’t._

 

_The tatami mat vibrated with the heavy footsteps. He heard men shout to get the young masters and the mistress. Lightheaded, Kuroo stumbled and slipped out of the room. He raced down the hallway, away from the room. He had to get as far away from there. The main focus was towards the front of the estate anyways. If he slipped farther back, he’d be safer._

 

_Of course, that was naïve of him to think as bad luck stepped out of one room, broad build and unperturbed eyes at the sight of a fleeing Kuroo. A brow lifted as he assessed the sight of the distraught man. “You’re not one of my men.”_

 

_“Have we met before?” His eyes narrowed, recalling. “Oh. You’re that Tsukishima boy’s subordinate, aren’t you?” Under any other circumstance, Kuroo would’ve scoffed. They were all the same age and yet Ushijima acted as if he was older._

 

_The indifferent gaze flickered up, past Kuroo, and down the hall where wailing roars erupted. The mourning sound as the men found his body in the room. The rally to find the fucking bastard who killed their master. He couldn’t have gone far. And then the eyes found their way back to Kuroo, the Kuroo who trembled from adrenaline, whose hands kept clenching and unclenching at his sides, feeling clammier under the pads of his fingers._

 

_“What’s your name?”_

 

_He swallowed thickly._

 

_“Kuroo, Kuroo Tetsurou.” Just speaking it felt like he had given a demon his life._

 

 

 

+++

 

 

The smile unnerved him, and the confidence that had the man zip to the back of the room even more so. Breezing past all the others, Ushijima’s new sworn brother bounded to Kuroo and flashed a cheerful set of teeth.

 

“You!” he shouted, “You must be Kuroo Tetsurou, right? Tendou Satori! Nice to meet ya!” Tendou grabbed Kuroo’s hand, and shook it between both of his. “Man, Wakatoshi told me what a real number you are!” And then he burst into a set of laughter.

 

The grin splayed, Tendou leaned in closer. Eye to eye. “You’ve got balls. First killing Tsukishima and then bringing the long lost fucking brother to Waka? Damn.” Kuroo could feel the gazes that the one-sided conversation attracted, the conversations that quieted and the ears that pricked in their direction. “You gotta tell me what’s going on in that mess of a head of yours.” A finger pressed against his temple.

 

“You planning on killing Wakatoshi?”

 

Kuroo tried his best to smile and laugh it off. He was cut off before he could answer. “I mean everyone here and their mothers know what you did. And I mean, Wakatoshi’s crazy for keeping you around, but I get it. Kinda, sorta. It’s Waka.”

 

“But tell me, how’d you find him? Or did he find you?” The lips curled, Cheshire and dark. “But, I mean if it’s the latter, shouldn’t you already be…” He drew a line with his index finger across his throat and clicked his tongue.

 

Tendou slapped Kuroo’s back as he tossed his head back to laugh. “Fuck, the look on your face! Priceless! You really want me to shut up. God! Probably going to strangle me if I don’t, huh?” More laughter. “I’m just pulling your strings. Calm down. Let’s have a drinking session sometime. Talk, yeah?” And just like that, with a sure squeeze on Kuroo’s shoulder, the red head left him and worked the crowd.

 

The man was an incubus, aging him twenty years in under three minutes with just a touch. His eyes followed him. The easy-going nature, the prominent smile that never left him. Didn’t his mouth hurt smiling so much? And then, his eyes shifted to Ushijima—quiet and unresponsive to conversation. An actual pillar compared to the incessant chirping of the other. Just watching the stark contrast made him tired.

 

Relief washed over him when it was time to leave. The black cars rolled out one by one. Kuroo stood at the bottom of the steps. He caught each eye that sneakily tried to catch a glance at him and returned each snicker or smirk with a pointed smile and wave of his own. When they turned their heads away with a grimace, he patted his pockets for a cigarette. The weight of his phone in his suit jacket caught his attention halfway through his search. Taking it out, he checked the time. It was well into the afternoon, and Ukai and Tsukki were probably making more rounds across town. He dialed Yamamoto’s number and continued his search with the other.

 

“Yeah, Boss?” he heard the greeting as quickly as the click on the line stopped the buzzing roll.

 

“Where are you guys?”

 

“Shinjuku. Is the meeting over?”

 

“How else would I be calling you?” he scoffed with an eye roll that Yamamoto wouldn’t get to see. “Hey, is strawberry there?” His eyes flickered over to those close enough to hear his conversation. He’d have to pad his words if he wanted to talk.

 

The nickname elicited a dreaded groan. “No,” the other answered with a thankfulness that carved out the single syllable. “But seriously though, why did you make me drive him around? Ukai has a bunch of guys that could’ve taken him.”

 

Kuroo’s lips curved downward around the cigarette he found and had tucked in his mouth. The name brought a prickle to his skin, goosebumps lifting under his suit. “You weren’t doing anything anyways,” he lied. “Better you work for the group than have you sit around on your lazy ass or spend your money playing pachinko like last time.”

 

There was a long silence and the faded crowd of Shinjuku’s busy streets disappeared with a firm sound of a door closing. Yamamoto took in an audible breath before saying, “Boss, can I tell ya something?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Old man Ukai is nothing like Boss Nekomata.”

 

Kuroo didn’t answer back.

 

“I don’t know how they were friends back then, but…now, something feels funny. He’s kinda…” Kuroo waited for Yamamoto to search for the words, words that surely Kuroo had in his mind too. While the other could be an airhead at times, he had perceptive instinct. “I don’t trust him.” The other breathed out quickly in one fell swoop as if the old man would catch him if he said it any slower or maybe he just wanted to get rid of the thought quickly to lighten his load. Kuroo flicked his lighter until it caught the flame. He burned the filter, inhaling deeply and exhaling out the smoke left.

 

“Hey, Yamamoto, you remember what the old man told us, right?”

 

“We gotta watch and observe before we act or else we’d be too easy to trap.”

 

“Exactly. Game plan for now is watching. Got it?”

 

“Got it,” Yamamoto answered reluctantly with a sigh. He could hear his body slide down the leather of the car seat. “But, Boss…”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I hate the kid and all that, like don’t forget it, but I mean we’re gonna do something before the boy gets in too deep right? No way you can’t see that he’s still green. And I mean what if Ukai—”

 

Kuroo tilted his head back to rest against the wall. He blew out a puff. “I won’t abandon ship. Geez,” he clicked his tongue, “did you always have such little faith in me? I’m absolutely offended.”

 

“That’s not what I meant!” the other whined, trying his best to fix his slip up.

 

He chuckled and tapped off the excess ash. “Don’t worry. Strawberry’s smart. You wouldn’t know it, but he could run off with your money before you realize it, and even when you do, you’ll still be fine about it.”

 

Yamamoto scoffed. “Like hell I’d be.”

 

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long to post the next chapter. Taking the CBEST this week and then the GRE next week and I am grossly underprepared. Why is applying to grad school such a struggle? While I'd want to blame these tests for why I'm posting this late, it's not their faults at all. I just haven't been writing. Also, I didn't mean to take slow burn so extreme but something about my need to flesh out the yakuza side of and develop some characters instead of writing the KRTSK of a KRTSK fic dominated. I promise the two will come together next chapter...maybe. I still gotta write it, so it's all up in the air.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, feedback, reviews are all welcome and very much appreciated. Seriously, they're my lifeblood when it comes to writing! ♡
> 
>  
> 
> http://kytsunee.tumblr.com/


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